Aeluma (ALMU) Q1 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

DATE

Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Founder and Chief Executive Officer - Dr. Jonathan Klamkin
• Chief Financial Officer - Christopher Stewart
• Investor Relations - Moira Conlon

TAKEAWAYS

• Revenue -- $568,000, decreasing from $1.4 million in the prior year's first quarter as the company prioritized R&D programs aligned with commercial priorities.
• GAAP Net Loss -- $3.8 million, or $0.19 per basic and diluted share, increasing from a loss of $1.5 million, or $0.09 per share, driven by increased investments in headcount and product development.
• Adjusted EBITDA Loss -- $2.7 million, widening from $450,000 in the prior year's first quarter reflecting higher operational expenses to support commercialization.
• Cash and Cash Equivalents -- $53.9 million as of Sept. 30, 2026, compared to $56 million at the end of the previous fiscal year.
• Research and Development Expenses -- $2.5 million, rising from $606,000 as the company advanced its photodetector and quantum dot laser technologies.
• General and Administrative Expenses -- $2.0 million, increasing from $1.7 million in the prior year's quarter due to expanded organizational capabilities.
• Interest Income -- $492,000, increasing from $115,000 in the first quarter of the prior year, reflecting returns on cash balances.
• CHIPS Program Funding -- $30 million in proposed funding under a letter of intent, subject to definitive agreements and negotiations with the U.S. Department of Commerce.
• Projected AI Infrastructure Investment -- $10.3 trillion by 2032, representing the total estimated build-out addressable by photonics components.
• Manufacturing Capacity Expansion -- 150 millimeter to 200 millimeter capability, established through a purchase agreement for an AIXTRON G10 system configured for proprietary processes.
• Accounts Receivable -- $504,000 as of Sept. 30, 2026, increasing from $340,000 at the end of the previous fiscal year.
• Total Assets -- $58.5 million, including $1.5 million in net property and equipment and $1.9 million in operating right-of-use assets.
• Stockholders' Equity -- $54.7 million, compared to $56.9 million as of June 30, 2026.
• Total Liabilities -- $3.8 million, including $2.0 million in current and long-term operating lease liabilities.
• Weighted Average Shares Outstanding -- 19.3 million basic and diluted shares, increasing from 16.1 million in the first quarter of the prior fiscal year.

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RISKS

• Stewart stated, "The terms are not yet final, and any potential award remains subject to definitive agreements and applicable conditions," regarding the up to $30 million in proposed CHIPS program funding.
• Klamkin stated, "Indium phosphide substrate supply continues to be constrained," noting a market-wide supply chain challenge that impacts throughput compared to gallium arsenide and silicon.

SUMMARY

Aeluma, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALMU) reported a decline in quarterly revenue to $568,000 as management focused on R&D contracts aligned with commercializing its heterogeneous integration platform for the AI datacom market. The company is advancing its non-indium-phosphide technology, utilizing gallium arsenide and silicon substrates to mitigate supply chain constraints and leverage existing qualified semiconductor fabs. Management finalized an agreement for a new MOCVD system to support manufacturing expansion to 200 millimeter wafers, while continuing negotiations for $30 million in proposed federal CHIPS Act funding. Operations are currently centered on technology readiness for an expected infrastructure ramp between 2028 and 2032, targeting high-speed photodetectors and quantum dot lasers.

• CEO Klamkin noted that hyperscalers aim to add more compute in the pursuit of 1,000-unit XPU/GPU clusters and beyond, necessitating optical interconnects beyond the current limits of copper cabling.
• The company is developing "slow and wide" transceivers, which spread data across a modest number of channels to conserve power for rack-scale AI applications at distances up to 100 meters.
• Management reported that its proprietary Lynx S-series photodetectors and Quasar quantum dot lasers are being developed to support industry initiatives such as the Open Compute Project.
• Klamkin stated, "The scale of investments in AI infrastructure is pressuring the supply chain, and we are pleased that our strategy to combine best-in-class materials with scalable manufacturing has attracted so much interest from customers and partners."
• Aeluma maintains internal capacity for growth on substrates ranging from 2 inches to 12 inches, allowing the company to support multiple markets including mobile sensing and defense.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• MOCVD: Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition, a process used to grow thin layers of semiconductor materials on a wafer.
• Indium Phosphide (InP): A compound semiconductor material traditionally used in high-speed and optoelectronic devices, currently facing supply constraints.
• Gallium Arsenide (GaAs): A semiconductor material used for devices such as integrated circuits and laser diodes that Aeluma uses as a scalable alternative to InP.
• Slow and Wide Transceivers: An architecture that spreads data across multiple lower-speed channels to reduce total power consumption in optical communication.
• XPU/GPU: General terms for various types of processing units, including Graphics Processing Units and AI accelerators.
• NPO and CPO: Near Packaged Optics and Co-packaged Optics, architectures that reduce electrical path lengths to mitigate power consumption in data centers.
• SRMO: Short-Reach Micro-Emitter Optics, an industry workstream focused on parallel optical connectivity stack development.
• VCSEL: Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser, a type of semiconductor laser diode with beam emission perpendicular to the top surface.
• Lynx S-series: Aeluma's proprietary brand of high-speed photodetectors for optical communication.
• Quasar: Aeluma's proprietary brand of quantum dot lasers.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Aeluma's First Quarter Fiscal Year 2027 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. And at this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Maura Conlon, Investor Relations for Aeluma.

Moira Conlon: Please go ahead. Good afternoon, and welcome to Aeluma's First Quarter Fiscal 2027 Earnings Call. I'm here today with Founder and CEO, Dr. Jonathan Klamkin; and CFO, Christopher Stewart. A presentation accompanying today's remarks is available on the Investors section of our website. Today's discussions and responses to questions may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in the earnings press release issued today, along with the reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. These reports, along with today's earnings release, can be found under the Investors section of our website.

Aeluma assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this call. Throughout the discussion, the company will refer to non-GAAP financial measures, including EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in our earnings press release and SEC filings. Now I'll turn the call over to Aeluma's CEO, Jonathan Klamkin.

Jonathan Klamkin: Thank you, Moira, and thank you all for joining today's call. Today, we will begin by recapping the breadth of recent activities and announcements in the AI datacom sector that highlight the strength of Aeluma's technology and go-to-market strategy. At the European Conference on Optical Communication, or ECOC, held recently in September in Malaga, Spain, the slow and wide transceiver concept for rack scale AI was discussed repeatedly. As hyperscalers aim to add more compute in the pursuit of 1,000-unit XPU/GPU clusters and beyond, it is necessary to scale up within the rack and across racks. Traditional copper cables reach a limit at high data rates and beyond a few meters, and this is where optical interconnects are needed.

Several architectures are expected to coexist to support the continued massive data center build-out. The formats differ primarily in how close the optics will be positioned to each switch ASIC or XPU/GPU and the distance over which the information must travel. Pluggable optics modules are extending beyond 100G per lane to 200 and 400G per lane and are for distances of tens of meters to kilometers. These are primarily for scaling across the data center. New packaged optics or NPO and co-packaged optics or CPO are for scaling up within racks and across adjacent racks and both drastically reduce electrical path lengths to mitigate power-hungry electronics.

Slow and wide transceivers are envisioned for distances up to 50 meters and possibly up to 100 meters. The slow and wide concept is simple. That is rather than squeezing all the information into only a few channels, it is spread across a modest number of channels to conserve power. This approach has inherent advantages. Each channel becomes less critical, there is inherent redundancy and there is room to scale. Beyond ECOC, discussions have continued at the Open Compute Project, or OCP, Global Summit, and at the Photonic-Enabled Cloud Computing Summit.

Credo announced the launch of Short-Reach Micro-Emitter Optics, or SRMO, a workstream of OCP, bringing together expertise spanning the full optical connectivity stack to advance development of the wide and parallel ecosystem. The Optical Compute Interconnect Multi-Source Agreement, or OCI MSA, continues to be lauded by hyperscalers and ecosystem partners to establish an open, interoperable optical interconnect specification for AI scale-up. The specification defines wavelength channels and groups for a bidirectional transceiver architecture that reinforces the importance of lasers for AI datacom. Indium phosphide substrate supply continues to be constrained. Indium phosphide fabs lack the throughput of gallium arsenide and silicon fabs. Early this year, NVIDIA invested in Lumentum and Coherent to support expansion of indium phosphide manufacturing.

Just this month, Marvell announced it had entered into an agreement to acquire Lumentum. This combination brings together best-in-breed technology to meet the needs for highly integrated optical solutions for AI infrastructure. In all, the U.S. AI infrastructure build-out that began in 2025 is expected to reach an aggregate investment of $10.3 trillion in 2032. Photonics is becoming an increasingly important part of this investment. The opportunities for Aeluma's technologies are vast, spanning slow and wide and fast and narrow transceivers that are important for both scale-up and scale-out AI architectures. As a reminder, Aeluma does not use indium phosphide substrates or indium phosphide fabs.

Aeluma's scalable MOCVD-based technology can be leveraged to manufacture micro-emitters and micro-photodetectors for slow and wide transceivers that can be directly integrated with CMOS. Aeluma is also developing quantum dot lasers based on gallium arsenide substrates for scale-up and scale-out architectures. Aeluma does not need new fabs to be built and qualified. We can work with gallium arsenide and silicon fabs that are already qualified. Our vision is to become the world's leading provider of semiconductor photonics components, and our heterogeneous integration platform, illustrated in slide four, has the potential to take us there.

As depicted on Slide 6, our Lynx S-series photodetectors are under development for slow and wide architectures, and our Quasar quantum dot lasers are under development for scale-up and scale-out interconnects. Neither require indium phosphide substrates or indium phosphide fabs, and both have the potential to support initiatives such as the SRMO OCP workstream and the OCI MSA. We continue to work with Sumitomo Chemical Advanced Technologies, a scaling partner for our MOCVD wafers, and with fab partners. We also announced an agreement with AIXTRON to procure the first of potentially several new MOCVD systems for further capacity expansion and for manufacturing 150 and 200 millimeter substrates, including both gallium arsenide and silicon.

The AIXTRON G10 arsenide phosphide system has become popular with indium phosphide manufacturers for scaling and to meet demand for lasers. Building on a multi-year relationship, Aeluma has worked with AIXTRON to configure these newer model tools for our proprietary processes that don't rely on indium phosphide substrates and can scale to even larger than 150 millimeter or 6 inch substrates. Our discussions with customers in datacom and other markets have expanded further. These include negotiation of possible non-recurring engineering investment and product opportunities, some with potentially large volumes to support the build-out during 2028 through 2032. Aeluma's core technologies, Lynx high-speed photodetectors and Quasar quantum dot lasers, are engineered to capitalize on our expanding pipeline of commercial opportunities.

Bringing things together, the scale of investments in AI infrastructure is pressuring the supply chain, and we are pleased that our strategy to combine best-in-class materials with scalable manufacturing has attracted so much interest from customers and partners. As we continue to navigate through fiscal 2027, we remain focused on commercialization and generating long-term shareholder value. Now, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Chris Stewart, to discuss the financials.

Christopher Stewart: Thanks, Jonathan. Turning to our financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2027, revenue was $568,000 compared to $1.4 million in the first fiscal quarter of 2026, and was generated primarily from government R&D contracts. As we discussed on our year-end call, we are currently prioritizing funded R&D programs that are aligned with our commercial priorities. GAAP net loss for the first quarter was $3.8 million, or $0.19 per basic and diluted share, compared to a net loss of $1.5 million, or $0.09 per basic and diluted share, in the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $2.7 million for the quarter, compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $450,000 in the first quarter of fiscal 2026.

The year-over-year change primarily reflects increased investment in headcount, product development, and the operational capabilities required to support customer programs and commercialization. We ended the first quarter with a strong balance sheet, including $53.9 million of cash and cash equivalents, compared to $56 million at June 30, 2026, and our balance sheet remains debt-free. Regarding the CHIPS program letter of intent for up to $30 million in proposed funding, we are continuing our diligence and contract negotiations. The terms are not yet final, and any potential award remains subject to definitive agreements and applicable conditions.

Over the remainder of the year, we expect to continue increasing investments in the people, systems, and supply chain initiatives that support our customer-driven technology development and preparing to scale our business. Our goal is to respond to the urgent market demand for new solutions while maintaining fiscal discipline as we pursue the significant opportunity we see ahead of us. Now, I'll turn the call back over to Jonathan for his closing remarks before we open the call to your questions.

Jonathan Klamkin: Thank you, Chris. To summarize, we are pleased with our continued progress toward commercialization and with the growing enthusiasm in the AI datacom market that are driving our go-to-market strategy. As always, I want to thank our incredible team for their hard work and dedication, and I want to thank all of you for your support and enthusiasm. Operator, you can now open the call for questions.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from Richard Shannon with Craig-Hallum.

Unknown Analyst: This is Tyler on for Richard Shannon. I was wondering, with the MOCVD that you put a purchase agreement for, when does this get installed and up and running? And could you describe the capacity that you have relative to what you had before after this is installed? I have a follow-up.

Jonathan Klamkin: We can't comment on the timeline for that new system, but what we could say is that we don't need it for commercialization. That tool is for capacity expansion for next-generation products and for some advanced development. It would certainly increase our capacity, but with the capacity we have in-house at Aeluma today, and the capacity commitment that we have from our partners, Sumitomo Chemical Advanced Technologies, we have sufficient capacity for the foreseeable future as we transition to commercialization.

Unknown Analyst: Got it. That makes sense. It's more of an accelerant. For the customers that you've expanded the discussions with, how would you describe these compared to the customers that you were referencing last quarter? Is there any difference in whether it be what they're addressing or just other way to describe them?

Jonathan Klamkin: Yes. As you know, we remain active in multiple markets, but the AI datacom opportunity is really at the forefront. And we're working to transition our technologies into products, and that includes a variety of photonics based on our large-diameter wafer platform. So high-speed photodetectors that could be used for scale-up and scale-out applications, and emitter technologies, including quantum dot lasers. And most near-term opportunities are likely for what the industry is referring to as microdetectors and microemitters for wide and parallel applications. And that references to our Lynx high-speed photodetectors. We see significant demand for this technology, and the timeline that we've spoken to where significant ramp is expected is really the 2028 and beyond.

And the numbers we're hearing, as sort of cited in our earnings release, are an aggregate of something like $10.3 trillion for this build-out that started in 2025 through 2032. And so we'll keep pointing to that timeline, 2028 through 2032, where we see significant ramps happening. At the same time that we hear laser suppliers are sold out, to an extent, we can interpret that supply is sort of fulfilled for the next year. But a significant ramp is expected in 2028 and beyond, and that timing is good for us for commercialization.

Operator: Our next question will come from Danial Yermakhan with Freedom Broker.

Danial Yermakhan: In the NRE discussion that you are having, is anyone talking about paying upfront or reserving capacity, or are these milestone-based payments?

Jonathan Klamkin: What we could say is for our fiscal '27, any incoming revenue, as we've said a couple months ago at our fiscal year-end earnings, is going to come from R&D contracts and commercial NRE. We expect to provide more color on those development efforts throughout the year. Again, I'll point to the technologies that we're turning into products, high-speed photodetectors and quantum dot lasers. And the nature of the arrangements could be anywhere from funding development to advance technology for future scaling, to development funding to provide samples, to development funding to provide samples for qualification in anticipation of potential product ramps starting in, say, 2028. That's what we could say at this time.

Danial Yermakhan: Okay. Yes. Talking about the AIXTRON MOCVD reactor you purchased, could you talk about just the wafer size capability? Is it 200 millimeter or 300 millimeter wafer? Any expectations for next reactors that you'll purchase?

Jonathan Klamkin: Yes. Let me say something about our current capability. As you and many of our shareholders know, we have a technology that scales to even 300 millimeter or 12 inch substrates, and we maintain capacity at Aeluma to perform MOCVD growth of arsenide and phosphide materials on any substrate size from 2 inch out to 12 inch. The new capability is this AIXTRON G10 arsenide phosphide tool, which is a very modern tool that was launched a couple of years ago and has become very popular with indium phosphide laser manufacturers. That tool can be used to grow on 4 inch, 6 inch, or 8 inch.

The specific tools that we've configured are for 6 inch or 150 millimeter and 8 inch or 200 millimeter. These tools were configured for Aeluma's proprietary process. So proprietary configuration of the tools themselves, we're not going to use them for indium phosphide growth, which is mostly what these tools get used for. We're going to use them to advance and expand capacity of our technology, which is to use gallium arsenide and silicon substrates for scaling. So, 150 and 200 millimeter capability for both capacity expansion and advanced development.

Operator: Our next question will come from Tim Savageaux with Northland Capital Markets.

Timothy Savageaux: Just wanted to ask some questions. My first question's about the kind of size of the market opportunity. We've seen some pretty substantial, I guess, mostly NPO type deals announced by Lumentum and Coherent, I think, $25 billion plus in the aggregate. And I guess, my question's twofold. How does that impact your view of the market opportunity facing Aeluma on the one hand, and on the other, you described your commercial discussions, I think last quarter is focused on marquee customers. I wonder if you would direct us anywhere in particular with regard to device suppliers, module makers, compute suppliers, hyperscale.

As those discussions sharpen, are you seeing opportunities in more or less than any one of those type of buckets?

Jonathan Klamkin: We'll try to address those one by one. Yes, some of the announcements and some of these major potential bookings that Coherent and Lumentum expect, I think you're referring to maybe PhotonLink out of Coherent. It's exciting to see that level of interest, and I mentioned the potentially $10.3 trillion aggregate investment that we'll see as we get to year 2032. We have engagement across the value chain, which means we might have some engagements or discussions with our customer's customer's customer, meaning hyperscalers, but then obviously are very active with system integrators and even Tier 1 suppliers.

And it's not uncommon, but somewhat unique position to be in, where, let's say, a Tier 1 supplier could be a potential customer, could be a potential partner, could provide us a sales channel to the end customer, but is also a competitor. We have a very disruptive technology that I think much of the ecosystem is starting to learn more about, and more about what Aeluma does, and this technology, and wondering if this is how semiconductor photonics should be manufactured, and is it needed now? Can it help now?

Indications are it's certainly going to be needed in the future because the scale of this build-out, and if you aggregate other applications and other markets, it's just very big. So another thing I could say to address your questions, Tim, we are working towards some standard product offerings, but we're also very focused on customer-specified products that require some level of customization, and that's very opportune for us. It's very opportune for anyone bringing a disruptive technology to market. And what does that mean? We might be turning some of our technology into products that we're going to work to qualify and offer to the ecosystem, but customer-specific qualification could take anywhere from 9 months to 18 months.

Again, the timeline is okay, because we see significant ramp coming in the 2028 timeline and beyond. So, high-speed photodetectors, microdetectors, as some people are referring to, microemitters, and lasers that hopefully leverage our quantum dot laser technology in the future. That's really where we're focused right now. But again coming back to your question, we talk to everyone in the value chain, but try to be very strategic about ensuring that the ecosystem is aware of our technology. The actual end customer would like to use the technology. Who exactly we sell it to, we will be able to provide some color over time.

Timothy Savageaux: If I could follow up, you mentioned, and I think, well, I will characterize it, maybe some increased momentum around slow and wide, and I thought that Credo talk was really interesting as well. As you assess your customer discussions, is that slow and wide approach sort of prominence on the potential high-volume agreements that you are pursuing?

Jonathan Klamkin: Some of the slow and wide opportunity is something we saw coming, arguably for a few years now. It is a technology we have been actively developing for some customers in other markets, actually, not in datacom initially, but we sort of knew that this would be applicable to datacom and that the demand might be coming. So it is nice to see agreements being made, workstreams at the OCP, and folks talking about that architecture and approach and where it will find its place in the data center, somewhere between copper interconnects and pluggable or between copper and some of the other CPO, NPO architectures that we are seeing.

I suspect that the opportunity is going to grow over time. And what is really nice about an opportunity like that, microemitters, microdetectors, as Credo referred to in some of their presentations, these are VCSELs and photodetectors, just like Aeluma has been developing for some time and were used in high-performance computers in the past, some of which made their way into consumer sensing markets. There is a nice opportunity in front of us today, but potential proliferation into other architectures and data centers and other markets. So certainly, yes, in the near term, that is a great opportunity for us.

At the same time, as technologies start to grow in their demand and then volumes grow, sales price come down, and so then I would point to the laser opportunity. As you know, the laser opportunity is significant in terms of average sales price compared to, say, detectors or VCSELs. But these are good entry points for us. So to answer your question, yes, very active and happy to see that what's now referred to as slow and wide seems to be taking off and has really garnered the interest.

One last thing I will say is, it is nice to see what we expected might happen, that the focus would become on sort of the near IR and shortwave infrared for slow and wide, because you really have the best of both worlds. Scalable manufacturing, but high enough data rates per channel so that you do not have to deploy millions of fibers. And I am sort of referring to using visible light micro LEDs at much lower data rates, which I do not think is as feasible. VCSELs are very mature. Surface normal photodetectors are very mature.

Data rates in the range of 50 gigabits per second, give or take, will give you a nice balance between power consumption, complexity, and packaging, and number of fibers that might be needed. So it is nice to see that the industry and ecosystem are starting to mobilize around that application.

Operator: And this will conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jonathan Klamkin for any closing remarks.

Jonathan Klamkin: Yes. Thank you very much for joining our call today. We look forward to connecting in the future and wish you a great day. Thank you very much.

Operator: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines at this time.

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