nLIGHT, Inc.

The grade, in three tenses

Headline 5.1 out of ten, 9 of 9 metrics filed: past 4.8 out of ten, present 5.1 out of ten, future 5.3 out of ten. The past asks what it actually did, the present what it is doing right now, the future what it is set up to do next.

The nine metrics

• Surviving crises (past): 7.6 out of ten. No warning events in its filings since 2017. 76th percentile among 99 sector filers. A production reading, recomputed from the filings on every data build (read from EDGAR 2026-10-12).
• Track record (past): 3.9 out of ten. +8.3% a year over 9 filed years; profitable in 2 of 9. 39th percentile among 93 sector filers. A production reading, recomputed from the filings on every data build (read from EDGAR 2026-10-12).
• Shareholder treatment (past): 2.3 out of ten. Share count grew 4.0% a year. 0% of cash flow returned. Insiders: 95 sales, 0 purchases. 23rd percentile among 67 sector filers. A production reading, recomputed from the filings on every data build (read from EDGAR 2026-10-12).
• Financial health (present): 4.5 out of ten. ROE -10%: lost 10¢ per shareholder dollar. Leverage 28%: owes 28¢ per asset dollar. 45th percentile among 95 sector filers. A production reading, recomputed from the filings on every data build (read from EDGAR 2026-10-12).
• Industry position (present): 4.1 out of ten. bottom 41% of 97 in its family; net margin -9%. 41st percentile among 97 sector filers. A production reading, recomputed from the filings on every data build (read from EDGAR 2026-10-12).
• Leadership (present): 7.5 out of ten. top 25% of 66 in its family for leadership; chief executive since 2018. 75th percentile among 66 sector filers. A production reading, recomputed from the filings on every data build (read from EDGAR 2026-10-09).
• Room to expand (future): 5.1 out of ten. top 49% of 94 in its family for room to expand. 51st percentile among 94 sector filers. A production reading, recomputed from the filings on every data build (read from EDGAR 2026-10-12).
• Growth drivers (future): 4.1 out of ten. bottom 41% of 93 in its family for growth drivers. 41st percentile among 93 sector filers. A production reading, recomputed from the filings on every data build (read from EDGAR 2026-10-12).
• Expectations vs reality (future): 7.6 out of ten. top 24% of 88 in its family for expectations against reality. 76th percentile among 88 sector filers. A production reading, recomputed from the filings on every data build (read from EDGAR 2026-10-12).

The filing record

Newest annual report: Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27 for the period ended 2025-12-31 (on EDGAR). Newest quarterly report: Form 10-Q filed 2026-08-07 for the period ended 2026-06-30 (on EDGAR). Newest results release: Form 8-K filed 2026-08-06 (on EDGAR). Newest filing: Form 4, 2026-09-17. Filings on record since 2004. Read from EDGAR 2026-10-12.

How the company works

Read from its Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27.

The people

Scott Keeney, one of the company's co-founders, has been president, chief executive officer and a director since July 2000, and chairman of the board since February 2018. Before nLIGHT he ran Aculight Corporation, a laser company that Lockheed Martin Corporation bought in 2008, and before that he was a consultant at McKinsey & Company from 1993 to 1998. Joseph Corso has been chief financial officer since March 2022; he joined the company in August 2020 as vice president of corporate development and investor relations, from the investment bank Stifel Financial Corp., where he worked from July 2010 to August 2020 and finished as global co-head of electronics and industrial technology. The proxy statement names those two as the company's executive officers; the record of insider filings adds James Nias as chief accounting officer. [1, 2, 3, 4]

The board has been turning over. Gerald Haines, known as Gerry, joined in January 2026 and sits on the audit committee. Mark Hartman joined the board and the audit committee in June 2025, after sixteen years at Woodward Inc., where he was promoted to chief financial officer in 2021 and retired in 2023. Bandel Carano and Raymond Link are not standing for reelection and, the proxy says, cease to be directors when their terms expire at the annual meeting. The longer-serving members include Geoffrey Moore, a director since September 2012; Bill Gossman, a director since May 2016 and lead independent director since April 2022; Gary Locke, who was United States Ambassador to China, Secretary of Commerce and Governor of the State of Washington; and Camille Nichols, who retired as a Major General in the U.S. Army and was interim president of the subsidiary nLIGHT DEFENSE Systems, Inc. from April 2024 to December 2024. Fifteen people sit on this site's record of insider filings, eleven of them filing in the last fifteen months. [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 4]

At the end of 2025 the company counted over 800 full-time employees worldwide, about 700 of them based in the United States. Employees in Austria have the legal capacity to make collective agreements and certain employees in Finland belong to unions for their specialty; the filing says there are no unions anywhere else and that it has had no employee-led work stoppages at any of its facilities. It says it recruits and reviews people on three tests it calls Skill, Will, and Fit. [13, 14, 15]

How it operates

nLIGHT designs, makes and sells high-power lasers: semiconductor lasers, fiber lasers, fiber amplifiers and beam combination and control systems, which customers build into their own laser systems or manufacturing tools. The core part is a compound semiconductor laser chip made from a gallium arsenide wafer, and the company says its patented multiplexed single-chip architecture combines several of those chips in one package. Its fiber lasers amplify that light in a proprietary fiber doped with a rare-earth element, and they are programmable: the size and shape of the beam and the timing of its pulses are set in software, so, as the filing puts it, one programmable laser can take the place of several less flexible ones. The company reports in two segments, Laser Products and Advanced Development, and sells into three end markets, Aerospace and Defense, Microfabrication and Industrial. [16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21]

Alongside the products there is paid research. The Advanced Development segment researches, designs and prototypes next-generation laser technology in directed energy and laser sensing, centered, as the filing puts it, on providing governmental agencies with next-generation laser technologies and solutions, including custom high-power fiber lasers and beam combining. Most of those development contracts have historically been cost plus fixed fee, meaning the customer covers the costs and pays an agreed fee on top, with some fixed price work where what is earned moves with what the job ends up costing. All of that development revenue is counted in the Aerospace and Defense end market. [22, 23, 24, 25]

The company says it sells to and supports over 300 customers worldwide, but a few of them carry the revenue: the top ten were approximately 75% of revenues in 2025, 72% in 2024 and 66% in 2023. It names BAE Systems, KORD Technologies, Mazak, Northrop Grumman, QinetiQ Limited, Raytheon Technologies and the U.S. Government among its top customers. The U.S. Government on its own, counted without resellers that serve only the government, was 36% of revenues in 2025, against 19% in 2024 and 18% in 2023. In Aerospace and Defense it sells direct to end customers, the government, prime contractors and defense subcontractors, through its own teams in the United States; in Industrial and Microfabrication it sells through a direct sales force in the United States, China, South Korea and European countries, and through independent representatives and distributors elsewhere. [26, 27, 28, 29]

Counted by where products and services are delivered, North America was 185.6 million dollars, 71.0% of 2025 revenue, Asia Pacific 38.4 million, 14.7%, and EMEA, meaning Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 37.3 million, 14.3%. The making is mostly done in house: the company manufactures, packages and tests the critical parts, including the semiconductor laser chips and the optical fiber, at plants in Camas and Vancouver, Washington, Hillsboro, Oregon, Longmont, Colorado, and Lohja, Finland. It says vertical integration lets it control and protect its processes, and that it has invested in highly automated semiconductor packaging lines at Camas, which it believes is critical to serve the directed energy and laser sensing defense markets. A contract manufacturer in Thailand packages some semiconductor lasers for commercial use, and certain raw materials, among them semiconductor wafer substrates, fiber laser chip packages and optics, come from single or limited-source suppliers. [30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36]

The specifics

What nLIGHT protects, it protects without leaning on any one patent. It uses patents, trade secrets and trademarks together with contracts, and says that although its intellectual property rights have significant value, it does not believe maintaining or growing the business is materially dependent on any single patent; in a field moving this fast, it adds, patents may matter less than technical expertise, new products, trade secrets, market penetration, customer relationships and service. The edge it claims for itself is vertical integration: controlling the full production process, it says, lets design cycles run faster. [37, 38, 39]

It names its competitors plainly: IPG Photonics, Coherent, BWT Ltd., Raycus Fiber Laser Technologies and Trumpf GmbH + Co. KG in lasers; prime defense contractors and subcontractors in Aerospace and Defense; and, in Industrial, widely used non-laser methods such as plasma cutting, water-jet cutting and resistance welding. It adds that some of its competitors are larger, with substantially greater financial, research, sales and marketing resources, and that certain of its own customers have internal laser technologies, which may add competitive pressure. [40, 41, 42]

Selling lasers into defense puts the company inside export control. It says it must export in compliance with U.S. export controls and may not always obtain the licenses it needs, and that denials or limits could harm its international and domestic revenues. Trade policy shows up too: the filing notes the new series of tariffs the U.S. government imposed on imported goods during 2025 and the retaliation that followed, and says those developments did not have a material impact on its 2025 results. Government work also sits outside the usual backlog arithmetic, because these contracts are typically only partially funded at any point in their term: the unfunded value of the company's government contracts, 184.4 million dollars at the end of 2025, is excluded from the backlog it reports. [43, 44, 45, 46, 47]

The company was incorporated as nLight Corporation in Washington in June 2000, reincorporated in Delaware as nLight Photonics Corporation in August 2000, and took the name nLIGHT, Inc. in January 2016. Its accounts consolidate wholly owned subsidiaries, among them nLIGHT Oy in Finland, nLIGHT Korea Inc., nLIGHT Laser Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, nLIGHT Cayman Ltd. and nLIGHT DEFENSE Systems Inc., the one Camille Nichols ran for part of a year. The recent record is one of pulling back where the work is not: restructuring in the fourth quarters of 2023 and 2024 cut headcount mainly in China and ended all manufacturing there in the fourth quarter of 2024, and plans in the third and fourth quarters of 2025 cut headcount in China, Austria, Germany and Finland and wrote down in-process capital equipment for production capacity that had not been placed into service. After the year closed, in February 2026, the company issued and sold 4.6 million shares in an underwritten public offering; net proceeds after the underwriting discount were 192.2 million dollars. [48, 49, 12, 50, 51, 52]

What drives growth, line by line

Aerospace and Defense. The big line, and the one that moved: 175.3 million dollars, 67.1% of 2025 revenue, up 60.0% from 109.5 million the year before. The filing credits increased unit sales of directed energy laser products and progress on existing development contracts, and all of the Advanced Development segment's contract research is counted here. The U.S. Government's own share of revenues rose to 36% from 19%. Why this market exists, in the company's words: against conventional weapons, directed energy weapons built on high-power fiber lasers offer ultra-precise targeting, low cost per shot and a nearly unlimited magazine, and the company says it has announced several Department of War sponsored programs. [30, 53, 25, 27, 54, 55]

Microfabrication. 47.2 million dollars, 18.1% of revenue, up 8.8%. The filing puts the increase down to more semiconductor lasers sold in EMEA and Asia Pacific, partly offset by fewer sold in North America. Microfabrication is the making of three-dimensional microscale structures by ablating, annealing, etching, drilling or precision marking, the work behind small features in electronics, medical and semiconductor products. [30, 56, 57]

Industrial. The line that fell: 38.8 million dollars, 14.9% of revenue, down 14.8%. The filing blames fewer industrial fiber lasers sold for cutting and welding, on lower customer demand and deteriorating market conditions across all regions. In this market, the company says, programmable fiber lasers keep displacing CO2 lasers and other non-laser techniques in sheet metal cutting on speed, quality and cost; the strain showed in the accounts as inventory charges on Industrial products in the fourth quarter of 2024. [30, 58, 59, 60]

The two reportable segments cut the same revenue a different way. Laser Products, the product business, was 68.6% of revenue against 68.8% the year before, and Advanced Development, the contract research, was 31.4% against 31.2%, growing 32.6%. The filing says Laser Products rose on the Aerospace and Defense and Microfabrication markets, partly offset by Industrial, and that Advanced Development rose on progress on existing research and development contracts. [61, 62, 63]

Where it went: North America 185.6 million dollars, 71.0% of revenue, up 39.8%; EMEA 37.3 million, 14.3%, up 35.1%; Asia Pacific all but flat at 38.4 million, 14.7%, up 0.7%. The filing says North America rose on Aerospace and Defense, partly offset by Microfabrication and Industrial, and that Asia Pacific and EMEA rose on Aerospace and Defense and Microfabrication, partly offset by Industrial. The split counts the location products and services are delivered to. [30, 64, 31]

Set against the record, 2025 was a turn. Revenue had fallen three years running, from 270.1 million dollars in 2021 to 198.5 million in 2024, before 261.3 million in 2025. Gross margin was 29.8% against 16.6%, which the proxy statement puts down to higher volumes, a more favorable customer and product mix and better cost absorption; the annual report adds duty reclaim and manufacturing yields, and notes that 2024 had carried inventory charges on Industrial products. The net loss narrowed to 23.5 million dollars from 60.8 million. [65, 66, 67, 68, 60]

What the company itself says about what comes next: backlog of 161.6 million dollars at the end of 2025, against 167.0 million a year earlier, all of it expected to be filled within the next 24 months, and, apart from that, 184.4 million dollars of unfunded government contract value the backlog does not count. It says it intends to continue its commitment to research and development and to introduce new products, and that its existing sources of liquidity will be sufficient to meet its working capital and capital expenditure needs for at least the next 12 months. [69, 47, 70, 71]

What the desk infers (inferred, not filed)

• nLIGHT now earns most of its money from a small number of United States government directed energy and laser sensing programs, so what it takes in follows government program funding more than the industrial laser cycle the company grew up on. Because: Aerospace and Defense was 175.3 million dollars, 67.1% of revenue, and grew 60.0%, while Industrial fell 14.8%. [30] The U.S. Government on its own, counted without resellers that serve only the government, was 36% of revenues in 2025 against 19% in 2024 and 18% in 2023, and the top ten customers together were approximately 75%. [27, 26] All of the Advanced Development segment, the paid research business, is counted inside the Aerospace and Defense market. [25] 184.4 million dollars of government contract value sat unfunded at the end of 2025 and is excluded from backlog, because such contracts are typically only partially funded at any point in their term. [47, 46] Confidence 85 of 100. Wrong if: A year in which the Aerospace and Defense market falls below half of revenue, or in which the U.S. Government's share of revenues returns to its 2023 level while total revenue keeps rising.
• The growth of the last year came mostly from work contracted directly with the government rather than from the prime contractors that headed the customer list a year earlier. Because: The U.S. Government's share of revenues rose to 36% in 2025 from 19% in 2024, while KORD Technologies, at 12% of revenues in 2024, and Raytheon Technologies, at 10%, both fell under the 10% line that requires naming. [27] Total revenue grew 31.6% over the same year, so the government's share nearly doubling came on a bigger base, while a prime contractor whose own dollars merely held their place would slip under the naming line. [72] In Aerospace and Defense the company sells directly to end customers, the U.S. Government, prime contractors and defense subcontractors alike, so both routes are open to it. [28] The segment that grew fastest, Advanced Development at 32.6%, is contract research whose revenue is counted in the Aerospace and Defense market. [62, 25] Confidence 60 of 100. Wrong if: A disclosure showing that sales to KORD Technologies and Raytheon Technologies grew in 2025 by more than the company's total revenue, which would mean prime contractors carried the growth.
• The Industrial business is being shrunk rather than defended, while the money and the floor space go to defense work in the United States. Because: Industrial revenue fell 14.8% to 38.8 million dollars and is down to 14.9% of the total. [30] The restructuring of the fourth quarter of 2024 ended all manufacturing in China, and the plans of the third and fourth quarters of 2025 cut headcount in China, Austria, Germany and Finland and wrote down in-process capital equipment for production capacity that had not been placed into service, or redundant equipment the company intends to sell. [50] Gross margin in 2024 was held down by inventory charges on products for the Industrial market. [60] At the same time the company says it has invested in highly automated semiconductor packaging lines at its Camas, Washington plant, which it believes is critical to serve the directed energy and laser sensing defense markets. [34] Confidence 70 of 100. Wrong if: A filing that shows industrial revenue growing again alongside new spending on industrial laser capacity, or a statement that the company is adding capacity for cutting and welding lasers.

Sources

1. nLIGHT, Inc., Form DEF 14A filed 2026-04-24: “Scott Keeney, one of our co-founders, has served as our president, chief executive officer and as a member of our board of directors since July 2000 and as chairman of our board of directors since February 2018. Prior to joining us, from 1998 to 2000, Mr. Keeney served as chief executive officer for Aculight Corporation, a laser company acquired by Lockheed Martin Corporation in 2008. Prior to that, he served as a consultant for McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm, from 1993 to 1998.”
2. nLIGHT, Inc., Form DEF 14A filed 2026-04-24: “Joseph Corso has served as our chief financial officer since March 2022. Mr. Corso previously served as our Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations from August 2020 to February 2022. Prior to joining us, Mr. Corso served in various roles at Stifel Financial Corp., a full-service investment banking and global wealth management firm, from July 2010 to August 2020, most recently as Global Co-Head of Electronics and Industrial Technology.”
3. nLIGHT, Inc., Form DEF 14A filed 2026-04-24: “The following table identifies certain information about our executive officers as of April 24, 2026.”
4. The record on this page: the officers and directors who file Forms 3, 4 and 5 (the SEC's insider data sets)
5. nLIGHT, Inc., Form DEF 14A filed 2026-04-24: “Gerald ("Gerry") Haines has served as a member of our board of directors and as a member of our audit committee since January 2026.”
6. nLIGHT, Inc., Form DEF 14A filed 2026-04-24: “Mark Hartman has served as a member of our board of directors and our audit committee since June 2025. Mr. Hartman is a retired CFO from Woodward Inc., a publicly traded Aerospace and Industrial company. Mr. Hartman spent 16 years at Woodward, beginning in 2007 as the Vice President Corporate Controller and held multiple senior finance roles before his promotion to Chief Financial Officer in 2021 until he retired in 2023.”
7. nLIGHT, Inc., Form DEF 14A filed 2026-04-24: “Messrs. Carano and Link are not standing for reelection and will cease to be members of our board of directors at the expiration of their terms at the Annual Meeting.”
8. nLIGHT, Inc., Form DEF 14A filed 2026-04-24: “Geoffrey Moore has served as a member of our board of directors since September 2012, as chairperson of our nominating and corporate governance committee since October 2023, as a member of our audit committee since April 2019”
9. nLIGHT, Inc., Form DEF 14A filed 2026-04-24: “Bill Gossman has served as the chairperson of our compensation committee since October 2023, as lead independent director since April 2022, as a member of our board of directors since May 2016”
10. nLIGHT, Inc., Form DEF 14A filed 2026-04-24: “From 2011 until 2014, Mr. Locke served as the United States Ambassador to China. Mr. Locke was the United States Secretary of Commerce from 2009 to 2011. Prior to that, Mr. Locke served two consecutive terms as Governor of the State of Washington from 1997 to 2005.”
11. nLIGHT, Inc., Form DEF 14A filed 2026-04-24: “She retired as a Major General in the U.S. Army following an extensive career that included key roles in Department of Defense acquisition and operations.”
12. nLIGHT, Inc., Form DEF 14A filed 2026-04-24: “Ms. Nichols also served as the Interim President of nLIGHT DEFENSE Systems, Inc. from April 2024 to December 2024.”
13. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “As of December 31, 2025, we had over 800 full-time employees worldwide. Of our total full-time employees, approximately 700 were based in the United States.”
14. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “In Austria, employees have the legal capacity to make collective agreements, and in Finland, certain employees belong to labor unions for their specialty. There are no labor unions to which our employees belong in any other location. We have not experienced any employee-led work stoppages at any of our facilities.”
15. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “At nLIGHT we both recruit and review people based on three criteria we categorize in terms of Skill, Will, and Fit.”
16. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “nLIGHT, Inc. is a leading provider of high‑power lasers for mission-critical directed energy, optical sensing, and advanced manufacturing applications. We design, manufacture, and sell a range of high-power semiconductor lasers and fiber lasers that are typically integrated into laser systems or manufacturing tools built by our customers.”
17. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “We also make high energy pulsed fiber lasers, fiber amplifiers, and beam combination and control systems for use in high-energy laser systems for directed energy and laser sensing systems used in a wide range of defense applications.”
18. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “We operate in two reportable segments, consisting of the Laser Products segment and the Advanced Development segment.”
19. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “The core building block of our products is a compound semiconductor laser chip manufactured from a gallium arsenide wafer. We use our patented multiplexed single-chip architecture to combine and package multiple semiconductor laser chips into what we believe are the most brilliant semiconductor lasers commercially available.”
20. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Our fiber lasers use a proprietary active fiber that is doped with a rare-earth element to amplify the light from multiple of our semiconductor lasers into a brighter, more powerful laser beam.”
21. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “For example, in some cases, a single programmable fiber laser with the ability to program the size and shape of its output beam can take the place of several less flexible lasers.”
22. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Our Advanced Development segment is dedicated to driving innovation and expanding our technological leadership in the fields of directed energy and laser sensing. Our advanced development programs focus on research, design, and prototyping of advanced and next-generation laser technologies, leveraging our expertise in high-power laser technology development, beam control, and advanced optics.”
23. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Centered around providing governmental agencies with next-generation laser technologies and solutions, our capabilities include the development of custom high-power fiber lasers and advanced beam combining technologies.”
24. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Most of our Development contracts have historically been structured as cost plus fixed fee due to the technical complexity of the research and development services, but we also perform work under fixed price contracts where gross margin can change from period to period based on the estimated cost of the project at completion.”
25. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “All Advanced Development revenue is included in the Aerospace and Defense market.”
26. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “We sell to and support over 300 customers worldwide. A limited number of customers drive a significant portion of our revenues. In the aggregate, our top ten customers accounted for approximately 75%, 72% and 66% of our revenues in 2025, 2024 and 2023, respectively. Our top customers include BAE Systems, KORD Technologies, Mazak, Northrop Grumman, QinetiQ Limited, Raytheon Technologies, and the U.S. Government.”
27. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “The following customers accounted for 10% or more of our revenues for the periods presented: Year Ended December 31, 2025 2024 2023 U.S. Government* 36% 19 % 18% KORD Technologies (1) 12 % (1) Raytheon Technologies (1) 10 % (1) *Excludes sales to customers who sell our products and services exclusively to the U.S. Government (1) Represents less than 10% of total revenues.”
28. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “In the Aerospace and Defense market, we sell our products and services directly to end customers, including the U.S. Government, prime contractors, and defense subcontractors, through our dedicated sales, marketing and engineering teams located in the United States.”
29. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “In the Industrial and Microfabrication markets, we sell our products through our direct sales force located in the United States, China, South Korea and various European countries. To supplement our direct sales team, we also sell through independent sales representatives and distributors in Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America.”
30. The record on this page: revenue by line and by geography, as tagged in the annual report (the SEC's financial statement data sets)
31. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Geographic revenue information is based on the location to which we deliver our products and services.”
32. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “EMEA consists of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.”
33. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “We manufacture, package, and test the critical elements of our high-power semiconductor and fiber lasers, including semiconductor laser chips and optical fiber in-house. Our primary manufacturing facilities are located in Camas, Washington; Vancouver, Washington; Hillsboro, Oregon; Longmont, Colorado; and Lohja, Finland.”
34. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Vertical integration enables us to control and protect our proprietary technologies and manufacturing processes, and we have invested in highly automated semiconductor packaging lines in our Camas, WA facility, which we believe is critical to serve the Directed Energy and Laser Sensing defense markets.”
35. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “We also use a third-party contract manufacturer, located in Thailand, to package certain of our semiconductor lasers used in commercial applications.”
36. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “We purchase certain raw materials and components used to manufacture our products and other components, such as semiconductor wafer substrates, fiber laser chip packages, optics, and other materials, from single or limited-source suppliers.”
37. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Although we believe that our patents and other intellectual property rights have significant value, we do not believe that maintaining or growing our business is materially dependent on any single patent.”
38. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Due to the rapid pace of innovation within the markets that we serve, it is possible that our protection through patents may be less important than factors such as our technological expertise, continuing development of new products and technologies, protection of trade secrets, market penetration, customer relationships, and our ability to provide support and service to customers worldwide.”
39. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “We also benefit from our vertically integrated business model, as we can conduct design cycles more rapidly through control of the full production process.”
40. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “We compete with companies that offer semiconductor lasers, fiber lasers, fiber amplifiers and other laser products such as IPG Photonics, Coherent, BWT Ltd., Raycus Fiber Laser Technologies, and Trumpf GmbH + Co. KG. We also compete with prime defense contractors and subcontractors in the Aerospace and Defense market, and with companies in the Industrial market that offer widely used non-laser production methods, such as plasma cutting, water-jet cutting and resistance welding.”
41. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Some of our competitors are larger and have substantially greater financial, research and development, managerial, sales, service and marketing resources than we do.”
42. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Moreover, certain of our customers have internal laser technologies, which may present additional competitive pressure.”
43. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “We must export our products in compliance with U.S. export controls, and we may not always be successful in obtaining necessary export licenses. Denials of export licenses or limitations imposed by these laws on our ability to export or sell our products, may harm our international and domestic revenues.”
44. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “The U.S. government implemented a new series of tariffs on imported goods during 2025, prompting retaliatory tariffs by other countries.”
45. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “These trade policy developments did not have a material impact on our financial results in 2025.”
46. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Backlog excludes the unfunded portion of our government contracts because these contracts are typically only partially funded at any point during their term, and all or some of the work to be performed under these contracts may remain unfunded unless and until the contract is modified and additional funding is allocated to the contract.”
47. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “As of December 31, 2025, the unfunded value of our government contracts totaled $184.4 million.”
48. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “We were incorporated under the name nLight Corporation in Washington in June 2000. We reincorporated in Delaware under the name nLight Photonics Corporation in August 2000 and changed our name to nLIGHT, Inc. in January 2016.”
49. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “The accompanying consolidated financial statements include the accounts of nLIGHT, Inc. and our wholly owned subsidiaries Arbor Photonics, LLC, nLIGHT Cayman Ltd., nLIGHT Laser Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, nLIGHT Oy (Finland), nLIGHT Korea Inc., nLIGHT GmbH, nLIGHT DEFENSE Systems Inc., and nLIGHT Europe S.r.l.”
50. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “During the third and fourth quarters of 2025, we implemented restructuring plans which included headcount reductions in China, Austria, Germany, and Finland, and the write-down of in-process capital equipment projects related to production capacity that had not been placed into service or redundant capital equipment we intend to sell. We implemented restructuring plans in the fourth quarters of 2024 and 2023 which resulted in reductions of headcount primarily in China, including the discontinuation of all manufacturing activities in China during the fourth quarter of 2024.”
51. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “In February 2026, we completed an underwritten public offering in which we issued and sold 4.6 million shares of our common stock, resulting in gross proceeds of $201.3 million.”
52. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Net proceeds after the underwriting discount were $192.2 million.”
53. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “The increase in revenue from the Aerospace and Defense market for 2025 compared to 2024 was driven by increased unit sales of directed energy laser products and progress on existing development contracts.”
54. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Compared to conventional weapons, directed energy weapons using high-power fiber lasers offer ultra-precise targeting, low cost per shot and a nearly unlimited magazine.”
55. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “We have announced several Department of War sponsored programs that are focused on leveraging high-power lasers and advanced optics to develop and deploy next-generation defense systems.”
56. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “The increase in revenue from the Microfabrication market for 2025 compared to 2024 was primarily attributable to increased unit sales of semiconductor lasers in EMEA and Asia Pacific, partially offset by decreased unit sales in North America.”
57. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Microfabrication refers to the process of creating three-dimensional microscale structures, typically by ablating, annealing, etching, drilling, or precision marking.”
58. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “The decrease in revenue from the Industrial market for 2025 compared to 2024 was primarily the result of decreased unit sales of industrial fiber lasers for cutting and welding due to lower customer demand and deteriorating market conditions across all regions.”
59. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Programmable fiber lasers continue to displace CO2 lasers and other non-laser techniques for sheet metal cutting, due to their significantly faster speed, higher quality and lower cost when used across a wide range of metals.”
60. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “In addition, Laser Products gross margin in 2024 was negatively impacted by inventory charges related to products for the Industrial market in the fourth quarter of 2024.”
61. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Laser Products $ 179,236 68.6 % $ 136,659 68.8 % $ 42,577 31.2”
62. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Advanced Development 82,094 31.4 61,889 31.2 20,205 32.6”
63. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “The increase in Laser Products revenue for 2025 compared to 2024 was the result of increased revenue from the Aerospace and Defense market and Microfabrication market as discussed above, partially offset by decreased revenue from the Industrial market. The increase in Advanced Development revenue for 2025 compared to 2024 was driven by progress on existing research and development contracts.”
64. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “The increase in North America revenue for 2025 compared to 2024 was the result of increased revenue from the Aerospace and Defense market, partially offset by decreased revenue from the Microfabrication and Industrial markets. The increases in Asia Pacific and EMEA revenues for 2025 compared to 2024 were the result of increased revenue from the Aerospace and Defense market and Microfabrication market, partially offset by decreased revenue from the Industrial market.”
65. The record on this page: the filed annual figures (EDGAR's company facts)
66. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Revenues increased to $261.3 million in the year ended December 31, 2025 compared to $198.5 million in 2024 due to higher sales volumes in the Laser Products segment and continued growth in the Advanced Development segment. We generated a net loss of $23.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2025 compared to a net loss of $60.8 million in 2024.”
67. nLIGHT, Inc., Form DEF 14A filed 2026-04-24: “Gross margin increased to 29.8% in 2025, compared to 16.6% in 2024 on higher volumes, more favorable customer and product mix, and better cost absorption.”
68. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “The increase in Laser Products gross margin for 2025 compared to 2024 was driven by primarily by changes in sales mix, which included increased sales of directed energy laser products, the impact of increased production volumes on fixed manufacturing costs due to the overall increase in sales as previously discussed, and an increase in duty reclaim and manufacturing yields.”
69. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “Backlog totaled $161.6 million and $167.0 million as of December 31, 2025 and 2024, respectively. All of the backlog as of December 31, 2025 is expected to be filled within the next 24 months.”
70. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “We intend to continue our commitment to research and development and to introduce new products, solutions, and complementary products to maintain and strengthen our competitive position.”
71. nLIGHT, Inc., Form 10-K filed 2026-02-27: “We believe our existing sources of liquidity will be sufficient to meet our working capital and capital expenditure needs for at least the next 12 months.”
72. nLIGHT, Inc., Form DEF 14A filed 2026-04-24: “Total revenue of $261.3 million increased 31.6% compared to 2024 as a record year from our Aerospace and Defense markets drove positive results.”

Where the revenue comes from

Product and service lines in fiscal 2025: Aerospace and Defense 67%, Microfabrication 18%, Industrial 15%. By geography: North America 71%, Asia Pacific 15%, EMEA 14%. As tagged in its annual report (Form 10-K, filed 2026-02-27).

Who runs it

Keeney, Scott H (President and CEO); Corso, Joseph John (Chief Financial Officer); Nias, James (Chief Accounting Officer); Moore, Geoffrey (director); Gossman, William (director); Haines, Gerald M II (director); Hartman, Mark D (director); Locke, Gary (director); Nichols, Camille (director); Link, Raymond A (director); and 1 more. 11 officers and directors have filed their own trades in the last fifteen months, names and titles as filed with the SEC, through 2026-09-30.

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