Share count
129Mpeak FY2025
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LWLG, Lightwave Logic Inc.
Lightwave Logic, Inc. is a specialty materials and intellectual property company focused on the development and commercialization of proprietary electro-optic polymer materials designed to enable high-speed optical modulators for data communications and other photonic applications.
Our Perkinamine family of EO polymer materials is engineered for integration into silicon photonics ("SiPh") and other photonic integrated circuit ("PIC") platforms.
The electro-optic properties of these materials can allow shorter interaction lengths in modulator designs, which can contribute to more compact device footprints and increased integration density.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$237K
+147.7% YoY
Vital signs · TTM
Cash & investments $75M
Cash burn · annual $14M
Runway 5.2 yrs
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- Situation
- Unprofitable. No meaningful revenue yet; the record is the cash on hand against the burn. Net current asset value. Current assets alone exceed every liability combined, and the surplus is most of the balance sheet: the shape Graham called a net-net.
- What moves the needle
- Operating margin has run around −24151% through the cycle on a 94% gross margin, the operating line in the red even at its best — so the lever is whether the spending below the gross line can come down enough to clear a profit: revenue growth against the cost curve, and the cash runway until it does. Capital spending runs about 2372% of sales, well above depreciation, so the return earned on what it sinks into that plant weighs as much as the margin. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- Return on capital has rarely cleared the cost of capital (median −317%, above 15% in 0 of 3 years). Owner earnings, the cash-based check, have been thin too. This is price-taker territory, where the balance sheet and the cycle matter more than any multiple; the rest is in the 10-K.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2023–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | ||||
| $41K | $96K | $237K | $243K | RevenueRevenue |
| 94% | 92% | 97% | — | Gross marginGross mgn |
| n/m | n/m | n/m | n/m | SG&A / revenueSG&A/rev |
| n/m | n/m | n/m | n/m | R&D / revenueR&D/rev |
| ($21M) | ($23M) | ($21M) | ($23M) | Operating incomeOp. inc. |
| n/m | n/m | n/m | n/m | Operating marginOp. mgn |
| ($21M) | ($23M) | ($20M) | ($22M) | Net incomeNet inc. |
| Cash flow & returns | ||||
| ($12M) | ($16M) | ($14M) | ($14M) | Operating cash flowOp. cash |
| $1M | $2M | $2M | $2M | DepreciationDeprec. |
| $8M | $5M | $5M | ($161K) | Working capital & otherWC & other |
| $3M | $2M | $1M | $929K | CapexCapex |
| n/m | n/m | 562.3% | 382.0% | Capex / revenueCapex/rev |
| ($13M) | ($17M) | ($15M) | ($15M) | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| n/m | n/m | n/m | n/m | Owner earnings marginOE mgn |
| ($16M) | ($18M) | ($15M) | ($15M) | Free cash flowFCF |
| n/m | n/m | n/m | n/m | Free cash flow marginFCF mgn |
| -335% | -317% | -291% | -287% | ROICROIC |
| -58% | -67% | -27% | -27% | Return on equityROE |
| −58% | −67% | −27% | −27% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | ||||
| $31M | $28M | $69M | $75M | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $30K | $46K | $191K | $216K | ReceivablesReceiv. |
| $1M | $516K | $478K | $780K | Accounts payablePayables |
| ($1M) | ($470K) | ($287K) | ($514K) | Operating working capitalOper. WC |
| $33M | $28M | $70M | $77M | Current assetsCur. assets |
| $3M | $2M | $2M | $2M | Current liabilitiesCur. liab. |
| 12.7× | 15.7× | 32.7× | 34.0× | Current ratioCurr. ratio |
| $42M | $38M | $79M | $86M | Total assetsAssets |
| ($31M) | ($28M) | ($69M) | ($75M) | Net debt / (cash)Net debt |
| -31.5× | — | — | -33.5× | Interest coverageInt. cov. |
| $36M | $33M | $75M | $81M | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | ||||
| 115M | 121M | 129M | 148M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | Revenue / shareRev/sh |
| $-0.18 | $-0.19 | $-0.16 | $-0.15 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $-0.12 | $-0.14 | $-0.12 | $-0.10 | Owner earnings / shareOE/sh |
| $-0.13 | $-0.15 | $-0.12 | $-0.10 | Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh |
| $0.03 | $0.02 | $0.01 | $0.01 | Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh |
| $0.32 | $0.28 | $0.58 | $0.55 | Book value / shareBVPS |
The record, charted
FY2023–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
ROIC
−291%low FY2023
Gross margin
97%low FY2024
Owner earnings vs. net income
Owner earningsNet incomeThe accountant's number, and the cash an owner can take; the gap is the tell.
($15M)owner earningsvs.($20M)net incomelow FY2024
Net income is the accountant's number; owner earnings is the cash an owner could take out. The walk between them, off the cash-flow statement, and whether the gap is widening or holding.
In fiscal 2025 the business turned a $20M loss into ($15M) of owner earnings: more cash than the profit line showed, after the non-cash charges and the capital it put back in.
| FY2025 | FY2024 | FY2023 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reported net income | ($20M) | ($23M) | ($21M) |
| Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back | +$2M | +$2M | +$1M |
| Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items | +$5M | +$5M | +$8M |
| Cash from operations | ($14M) | ($16M) | ($12M) |
| Maintenance capital expenditurethe spending needed just to hold position and volume | −$1M | −$2M | −$1M |
| Owner earnings | ($15M) | ($17M) | ($13M) |
| Growth capital expenditurediscretionary; spent to get bigger, not to stand still | — | −$585K | −$2M |
| Free cash flow | ($15M) | ($18M) | ($16M) |
| Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue | -6367% | -18025% | -32974% |
Owner earnings is the cash an owner could pull out without starving the business: operating cash less the capital it must spend to hold its position .
Maintenance capex is estimated as depreciation where a growing business invests above it; free cash flow is the figure the scorecard's free-cash margin reads.
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →
Will it survive?
- Can it pay its interest? -30.8×Does not cover its interestOperating income ($21M) ÷ interest expense $674K
What this means
A full year of operating profit didn't cover the interest bill. This is the zombie zone: the business depends on refinancing, asset sales, or forbearance to service its debt.
- Net cash, debt-freeCash $69M − debt $0
What this means
Cash and short-term investments exceed every dollar of debt by $69M, on net the company owes nothing, and can act from strength when others can't. Net debt is the leverage figure that matters: the cash is already set against the debt. Strategic or illiquid investments aren't counted here.
- How long is cash tied up? -22620dNegative, funded by othersDSO 294 + DIO 2654 − DPO 25568 days
What this means
Days cash is tied up between paying suppliers and collecting from customers. A negative cycle is a quiet moat: suppliers and customers fund the operation (Buffett's “float”), the company grows on other people's money.
Is it a good business?
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 16%
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
- Owner-earnings margin -18025%Consumes cash through the cycle3-yr median margin, range -32974%–-6367%; latest ($15M) = operating cash ($14M) − maintenance capex $1MIndustry peers: median 8%
What this means
What an owner could take out without starving the business: operating cash less the maintenance capital it must spend to hold its position — Buffett's owner earnings. That's -6367% of revenue this year, a -18025% median across 3 years. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $6M of SBC) leaves ($21M).
- Are earnings backed by cash? ($14M)Loss, and burning cashNet income ($20M) · cash from operations ($14M)
What this means
The company reported a net loss, so a conversion ratio isn't meaningful. What matters then is whether operations still threw off cash, here, they did not.
How is the cash used?
- Not enough data
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
- Investing or harvesting? 0.70×HarvestingCapex $1M ÷ depreciation $2M
What this means
Descriptive, not a grade. Above ~1× means investing faster than assets wear out (growth, or, sustained for years, today's earnings carrying less depreciation than tomorrow's will). Below means spending less than it's wearing out (efficiency, or a melting asset base). The ratio won't tell you which; the filings will.
Graham’s defensive tests · 1 of 2 met
Graham’s numerical criteria for the defensive investor (The Intelligent Investor, ch. 14), run on the filings. A floor of safety, not a buy signal; many fine modern businesses fail his strictest liquidity rules by design.
- Adequate size MissRevenue ≥ $2B · $237K
What this means
Big enough to weather a storm. Graham's 1972 floor was ~$100M of sales (≈ $700M today); we use a $2B revenue line as a conservative modern stand-in.
- Strong liquidity PassCurrent ratio ≥ 2× · 32.69×
What this means
Current assets at least twice current liabilities, near-term bills covered without touching the business. Strict by design: many cash-rich modern firms run leaner and miss it, holding their cushion in longer-dated securities.
- Moderate price —P/E ≤ 15 and P/E × P/B ≤ 22.5 · decided by the price
What this means
Graham's valuation gate, the wall he kept between a sound business and a sound investment. Three-year average earnings are $-0.14/share (latest year $-0.13), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $0.48/share. Enter a price in “What the price implies” just below for the P/E, P/B, and whether it clears. But this is the rule Buffett outgrew: there's no hard P/E law, and a wonderful business can deserve a far richer multiple if the thesis holds, treat it as the bargain-hunter's floor, not a verdict on the price.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Moderate contestabilityAI is likely to reshape costs and some products here without clearly contesting or sparing the core moat; how the company itself frames it is the tell.
In its own filing Named as a competitive risk
Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat.
“Another of our significant target markets is the fiber optic data communications market, in particular ultra-high bandwidth optical connections deployed inside and between datacenters and/or AI clusters, which may be subject to heavy competition from other PIC based technologies such as silicon photonics and Indium Pho…”
The question is whether a moat the record shows as durable outlasts a technology that lowers the cost of part of what the firm sells. The durability is read in the record above, the filing's own framing of AI beside it; the industry label decides nothing on its own.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Current Position
as of the latest quarter, Mar 31, 2026Can the business pay what it owes this year, off the freshest balance sheet: the quality of the assets, the debt actually coming due, and what a low ratio means here.
Current assets$77M
- Cash & short-term investments$75M
- Receivables$216K
- Inventory$50K
- Other current assets$1M
Current liabilities$2M
- Accounts payable$780K
- Other current liabilities$1M
Current ratio33.99×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×
Quick ratio33.97×stricter: inventory excluded
Cash ratio33.37×strictest: cash alone against what's due
Working capital$74Mthe cushion left after near-term bills
Cash runway4.9 yrsthe business is consuming cash; this is how long the cash on hand lasts at that rate
Revenue, latest quarter vs. a year ago+27.3%the freshest read on whether the business is still growing
Current ratio, recent quarters20.1× → 34.0×
Deeper floors
Tangible book value$79Mequity stripped of goodwill & intangibles
Net current asset value$72MGraham's net-net: current assets less all liabilities
Debt incl. operating leases$3M$3M of it operating leases
Deferred revenue$2Kcustomer cash collected before delivery; operating float
From the company's latest filing.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Owner earnings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | $1.3M | $1.5M | ($13M) |
| 2024 | $832k | $806k | ($17M) |
| 2024 | $627k | $509k | ($17M) |
| 2025 | $8.6M | $8.5M | ($15M) |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership2.2%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- CEO pay ratio56:1
What the chief earns for every dollar the median employee makes, per the 2026 proxy. A high ratio alone settles nothing; some businesses are genuinely top-heavy in scarce skill. A runaway figure is where Buffett starts asking whether the board is doing its job.
- Stock-based compensation$6M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 2455% of revenue. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
Peers, Semiconductors
The same industry, side by side on owner economics. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | Gross margin | Op. margin | ROIC | Owner earn. margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WMSAdvanced Drainage Systems | $3.1B | 24% | 16.1% | 16% | 13% |
| AWIArmstrong World Industries Inc | $1.6B | 37% | 25.7% | 23% | 11% |
| AZEKThe Azek Company Inc. | $1.4B | 32% | 8.7% | 5% | 4% |
| NPOEnPro Industries | $1.1B | 40% | 6.1% | 3% | 10% |
| MYEMyers Industries Inc. | $826M | 32% | 6.9% | 16% | 7% |
| SWIMLatham Group Inc. | $546M | 31% | 4.3% | 4% | 8% |
| KRTKarat Packaging Inc. | $468M | 34% | 8.9% | 24% | 7% |
| LWLGLightwave Logic Inc. | $237K | 94% | -24150.6% | -317% | -18025% |
| Group median | — | 33% | 7.8% | 11% | 8% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFLightwave Logic Inc. is profitable, but owner earnings are negative this year because capital spending currently outruns operating cash, a build-out, so the owner-earnings reverse-DCF has no positive base to grow. We read the price from both ends instead: type a price to see the steady-state profitability it demands, then set the mature margin you would believe and weigh the two against each other. Nothing leaves your browser unless you enter it in your notebook.
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The assumptions
Enter a price to run it.
Owner earnings it must reach—
Margin the price demands—
Owner-earnings margin today−6273%
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Two reads of one future. From your price: the owner earnings the company must reach, valued at a mature multiple and discounted back at your rate, expressed as the margin it implies on revenue grown at your rate. From your belief: the mature margin you would credit, set on the dial above. When the margin the price demands runs above the one you would believe, you are paying for a future taken on faith. For a deep cyclical at a trough, normalized through-cycle earnings are the better lens; this mode is for the genuinely unprofitable, and for the profitable business whose capital spending currently outruns its cash.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Lightwave Logic Inc. (LWLG), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/LWLG, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← LWAY its page in the Manual LXEO →
Industry order: ← LSCC the Semiconductors chapter MCHP →