POET Technologies Extends Warrants from 2018 Public Offering

TORONTO (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — POET Technologies, Inc. (OTCQX: POETF; TSX Venture: PTK) the designer and developer of the POET Optical Interposer™ and Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) for the data center and tele-communication markets, today announced the Company will extend the exercise period for warrants granted to investors in connection with its March 2018 public offering managed by Cormark Securities Inc. based in Toronto, Ontario Canada.

The Company will be extending the exercise period by four months to July 23, 2020 for a total of 12,545,350 common share purchase warrants, all of which are exercisable at C$0.75 per share (collectively, the “Warrants”).  These existing Warrants were issued pursuant to a public offering completed by Cormark on March 21, 2018 with a two-year period in which to exercise.  All other terms and conditions of the Warrants remain unchanged.  The Warrant extension, approved by the Company’s Board of Directors, has been accepted by the Company’s Indenture Trustee and the TSX Venture Exchange.

The Company also reported today that the Tranche 2b payment of US$8.25 million is on schedule and to be paid to POET on or before March 31, 2020.  The Overseas Direct Investment (ODI) application submitted by the Buyer has been accepted by the Chinese authorities in Shanghai and approval of the transfer to POET is expected soon.  The remaining Tranche 3 payment of US$5M is expected to be paid by the end of May 2020.

In response to the potential risks associated with COVID-19, the Company has taken certain preventive measures to ensure its business remains operational while also protecting employees,  including working from home, social distancing among team members, sanitation of test equipment and workstations, and a split rotation schedule that reduces the impact to operations in the event that infection requires quarantining of staff.

“Although we elected not to participate in the recent Optical Fiber Conference (OFC) in San Diego, we have been conducting multiple virtual meetings with potential customers, strategic partners and financial analysts that we had planned to see at OFC to review the benefits of the POET Optical Interposer™ across a number of potential applications,” commented Vivek Rajgarhia, President & General Manager of POET.  “The response has been very positive, and our discussions have focused on products in which our platform can bring tremendous value to their offerings.”

Due to the uncertainty of travel, the POET Board has deferred setting a date and location for its next Annual General Meeting for approximately six weeks and is considering using the “TSX Trust Virtual Alternative” platform.

About POET Technologies, Inc.  

POET Technologies is a design and development company offering integration solutions based on the POET Optical Interposer™, a novel platform that allows the seamless integration of electronic and photonic devices into a single multi-chip module using advanced wafer-level semiconductor manufacturing techniques and packaging methods. POET’s Optical Interposer eliminates costly components and labor-intensive assembly, alignment, burn-in and testing methods employed in conventional photonics. The cost-efficient integration scheme and scalability of the POET Optical Interposer brings value to any device or system that integrates electronics and photonics, including some of the highest growth areas of computing, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles and high-speed networking for cloud service providers and data centers. POET is headquartered in Toronto, with operations Allentown, PA and Singapore. More information may be obtained at www.poet-technologies.com.