Akoustis Announces New Tier-One Mobile Infrastructure OEM Customer and Purchase Orders for RF Filters
- Company Receives Development Purchase Order (P.O.) to Deliver Two Key LTE RF Filters -
- Company Receives Additional Place Holder P.O. for 0.5 Million Unit Production Order Upon Successful Testing of Pre-Production Units -
- Company’s Single Crystal BAW RF filter Solutions to address challenging 4G/LTE coexistence requirement -
Charlotte, N.C., May 11, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Akoustis Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKTS) (“Akoustis” or the “Company”), a manufacturer of patented single-crystal bulk acoustic wave (BAW) high-band RF filters for mobile and other wireless applications, announced today the Company has received two new purchase orders (P.O.) for two 4G LTE BAW RF filters from a new tier-one mobile infrastructure OEM customer.
The customer provides 4G LTE spectrum solutions for mobile infrastructure applications. The first PO covers development and delivery of pre-production units for evaluation and testing. The second PO is a place holder order containing the pricing for the first 0.5 million production RF filters for future production orders assuming successful qualification and testing of the pre-production units. Assuming successful qualification by the customer, the Company expects to receive a production order from the OEM’s contract manufacturers to deliver the pre-production units in the fourth quarter of this calendar year with production shipments expected to begin in early 2019.
Akoustis will leverage its integrated design & manufacturing (IDM) business model to successfully deliver BAW RF filters for this project. The RF filters are designed to operate at LTE mid-band frequencies, which reside in the sub-6 GHz spectrum. The filter wafers will be manufactured using Akoustis’ new proprietary XB1 single-crystal BAW manufacturing process, which delivers high-performance RF filter solutions for frequencies up to 7 GHz.
Jeff Shealy, Founder & CEO of Akoustis, commented, “Akoustis expects to deliver pre-production units for both BAW RF filters for two critical LTE bands in the second half of this calendar year,” Mr. Shealy added, “Our XB1 single crystal BAW wafer process is tracking well to complete qualification by mid-year and we plan to leverage this process to produce differentiated RF filter performance to our customer.”
The Company’s XBAW single-crystal piezoelectric manufacturing process supports a wide range of frequency spectrum up to 7 GHz, covering 2 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi, 4G LTE and emerging 5G cellular and C-V2X applications. In March, the Company announced its first commercial filter product using its proprietary XB1 process, creating the industry’s first commercial 5.2 GHz BAW filter designed for use in tri-band WiFi router applications. In April, the Company announced a second commercial filter product in the 3.8 GHz Band, which it expects to move to production with an existing key military radar customer.
About Akoustis Technologies, Inc.
Akoustis® (http://www.akoustis.com) is a high-tech BAW RF filter solutions company that is pioneering next-generation materials science to address the market requirements for improved RF filters - targeting higher bandwidth, higher operating frequencies and higher output power compared to incumbent polycrystalline BAW technology deployed today. The Company utilizes its proprietary XBAW single-crystal BAW manufacturing process to produce bulk acoustic wave RF filters for mobile and other wireless markets, which facilitate signal acquisition and accelerate band performance between the antenna and digital back end. Superior performance is driven by the significant advances of high-purity, single crystal piezoelectric materials and the resonator-filter process technology which drives electro-mechanical coupling and translates to wide filter bandwidth.
The Company plans to service the fast growing multi-billion-dollar market of device OEMs, network providers, and consumers to diminish front end phone heat, battery drain and signal loss -- all considered to be directly related to current RF polycrystalline filter technologies' limitations. The Company owns and operates a 120,000 sq. ft. ISO-9001 certified commercial wafer-manufacturing facility located in Canandaigua, NY, which includes a class 100 / class 1000 cleanroom facility - tooled for 150-mm diameter wafers - for the design, development, fabrication and packaging of RF filters, MEMS and other semiconductor devices. Akoustis Technologies, Inc. is headquartered in the Piedmont technology corridor near Charlotte, North Carolina.
Forward-Looking Statements
This document includes “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, that are intended to be covered by the “safe harbor” created by those sections. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about our estimates, expectations, beliefs, intentions, plans or strategies for the future (including our possible future results of operations, business strategies, competitive position, potential growth opportunities, potential market opportunities and the effects of competition), and the assumptions underlying such statements, including our expectations on the timing of the completion of our development work on the order described above and the timing of the shipment of production units. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not historical facts and typically are identified by use of terms such as "may," "will," "should," "could," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," “intend,” “forecast,” “seek,” "potential," "continue" and similar words, although some forward-looking statements are expressed differently. Forward-looking statements are neither historical facts nor assurances of future performance. Instead, these forward-looking statements are based on management’s current beliefs, expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those currently anticipated include, without limitation, risks relating to the results of our research and development activities, including uncertainties relating to semiconductor process manufacturing; the development of our BulkONE® technology and products presently under development and the anticipated timing of such development; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights that are valuable to our business, including patent and other intellectual property rights; our ability to successfully market and sell products based on our technologies; the ability to achieve qualification of our products for commercial manufacturing in a timely manner and the size and growth of the potential markets for any products so qualified; the rate and degree of market acceptance of any of our products; and our ability to raise funding to support operations and the continued development and qualification of our products and the technologies underlying them. These and other risks and uncertainties are described in more detail in the Part I, Item 1A - Risk Factors of the Company’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and in subsequently filed Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. In light of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the forward-looking statements regarding future events and circumstances discussed in this press release may not occur, and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. The forward-looking statements included in this press release speak only as of the date hereof and, except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update publicly or privately any forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, for any reason after the date of this press release to conform these statements to new information, actual results or to changes in our expectations.
Contact: COMPANY: Tom Sepenzis Akoustis Technologies, Inc. Director of Investor Relations 704-890-2925 tsepenzis@akoustis.com The Del Mar Consulting Group, Inc. Robert B. Prag, President 858-794-9500 bprag@delmarconsulting.com
Released May 11, 2018