Laser giant nLIGHT's preliminary performance forecast for the fourth quarter of 2024

Recently, nLIGHT, a manufacturer of high-power semiconductors and fiber lasers, released its preliminary performance forecast for the fourth quarter of 2024.

According to disclosed information, nLIGHT expects its revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 to be between $46 million and $48 million, lower than the estimated range of $49 million to $54 million when it released its third quarter results on November 7, 2024.

In the fourth quarter of 2024, nLIGHT expects the company's laser product revenue to be between $31 million and $32 million; The revenue from advanced development is approximately $15 million to $16 million.

The total revenue for the fourth quarter of the same period in 2023 was 51.9 million US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of approximately 7.51% to 11.37%. NLIGHT believes that there are multiple factors contributing to the decline in income.

Currently, nLIGHT is mainly facing challenges such as sustained weakness in the industrial market, technical challenges in microfabrication business, and delivery time for a limited number of defense products, resulting in a decrease in overall product revenue.

In addition, due to nLIGHT's efforts to adjust several non recurring expenses related to its industrial business scale, the company expects gross profit margin and adjusted EBITDA to be significantly lower than its previously announced fourth quarter forecast range. Previously, it had predicted in its third quarter financial report that the overall gross profit margin for the fourth quarter of 2024 would be between 17% and 21%, with laser products having a gross profit margin between 21% and 25%.

Based on the performance of the first three quarters of 2024, nLIGHT2024's annual revenue will be approximately between $197 million and $199 million. In 2024, nLight's GAAP net loss for the first three quarters was as high as $35.8 million.

In 2024, nLIGHT's overall gross profit margin for the third quarter is 22.4%. Due to a decline in revenue in the fourth quarter and nLIGHT's prediction that the gross profit margin will also be significantly lower than the original estimate of 17% to 21%, many industry insiders predict that nLIGHT will still incur losses in the fourth quarter, and will not be able to achieve profitability for the whole year, and the extent of the losses may further expand.

If predicted in this way, combined with previous years' performance reports, nLIGHT will suffer losses for six consecutive years, with a current net loss of up to $195.6 million.

Regarding this, Scott Keeney, President and CEO of nLIGHT, stated that although our commercial market continued to face difficulties in the fourth quarter, as the company enters 2025, I am optimistic about our overall business, especially our aerospace and defense businesses. This year, our multiple projects in the fields of directional energy and laser sensing have shown good visibility, and we are still in a favorable position for both short-term and long-term growth in the aerospace and defense industries.

In terms of directional energy business, it can be said to be a major highlight of nLIGHT, mainly involving directional energy weapons and laser sensors. In the third quarter alone, sales reached 30.3 million US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 60%. It is reported that nLIGHT has signed a contract with the US Department of Defense to produce megawatt level beam combining lasers by 2026. In terms of laser weapons, the key project is the US Army's DE M-SHORAD program, which develops a 50 kW high-energy laser for short-range air defense.

In terms of traditional industrial laser processing business, its sales have significantly declined. Keeney previously confirmed that nLIGHT will no longer produce products at its factory in Shanghai for the Chinese market. Although it still retains its business in the Chinese market, it has now transferred its production lines in China to Fabrinet in Thailand or nLIGHT's automated factories in the United States.

Despite facing overcapacity and weak demand for electric vehicles in the industrial laser field, nLIGHT believes that the additive manufacturing market is a major growth point for the company.

In this regard, nLIGHT announced in November 2024 the production of the Corona AFX-2000 dedicated 2kW laser. It is said to improve the productivity of laser powder bed fusion technology for metal additive manufacturing. We have successfully passed commercial validation for leading clients in the aerospace, defense, and automotive markets.

It is expected that AFX-2000 will be widely used in the field of highly reflective metals such as aluminum and copper, as these materials can significantly benefit from stable and high brightness laser processing, and printing speed may be tripled. Therefore, the introduction of AFX-2000 will help users achieve effective cost reduction in large-scale production of parts.

In addition, nLIGHT is collaborating with EOS to integrate nLIGHT's advanced beam shaping fiber laser into EOS metal 3D printers, in order to improve process control and overall productivity.

Source: Yangtze River Delta Laser Alliance