Operator

Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the nLIGHT, Inc. First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the conference over to John Marchetti, Vice President of Corporate Development and Head of Investor Relations. John, please go ahead.

John Marchetti
Vice President of Corporate Development & Investor Relations

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss nLIGHT’s first quarter 2026 Earnings Results. I’m John Marchetti, nLIGHT’s VP of Corporate Development and the Head of Investor Relations. With me on the call today are Scott Keeney, nLIGHTs Chairman and CEO; and Joe Corso, nLIGHT’s CFO.

Today’s discussion will contain forward-looking statements, including financial projections and plans for our business, some of which are beyond our control, including the risks and uncertainties described from time to time in our SEC filings. Our results may differ materially from those projected on today’s call, and we undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statement, except as required by law.

During the call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. We have provided reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release and in our earnings presentation, both of which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our

SEATTLE — Amazon.com and its cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services faced significant disruptions Thursday as a lingering data center overheating problem in Northern Virginia continued to affect customers, with many users reporting difficulties accessing the retail website, placing orders and using AWS-powered applications. While core shopping functionality has largely recovered for most users, the outage — now entering its second day — has highlighted the far-reaching impact of AWS when even a single region encounters technical difficulties.

The issues originated from elevated temperatures in a key US-East-1 data center, forcing Amazon to throttle certain services and prioritize recovery efforts. As of late Thursday, the company reported that recovery was progressing but acknowledged that full restoration could take several more hours. The outage has affected a wide range of services and third-party websites that rely on AWS infrastructure, including streaming platforms, financial apps and major online retailers.

Downdetector showed sustained spikes in user reports for both Amazon.com and AWS, with many customers complaining about slow loading times, failed checkouts and error messages when trying to access their accounts or complete purchases. While the main retail website has been partially operational, some features like personalized recommendations and rapid delivery options have been inconsistent.

Widespread Impact on Businesses and Consumers

The outage has ripple effects across the internet. Popular services hosted on AWS, including parts of Coinbase, FanDuel and various analytics platforms, experienced intermittent problems. Smaller e-commerce businesses that rely on Amazon’s infrastructure for hosting and payment processing reported lost sales and frustrated customers. For individual shoppers, the timing — during a busy pre-weekend period — added inconvenience as many tried to complete online orders.

Amazon has not released an official estimate of the financial impact, but analysts suggest the disruption could cost millions in lost revenue and damaged customer trust. This marks the latest in a series of high-profile cloud outages that have raised questions about over-reliance on single providers for critical internet infrastructure.

Amazon’s Response and Recovery Efforts

Amazon Web Services updated its Service Health Dashboard regularly, noting that engineers were working to restore normal cooling capacity and bring affected systems back online. The company emphasized that no customer data was compromised and that the issue was isolated to environmental factors within one facility. Customers with critical workloads were advised to use multi-region architectures or activate backup systems where available.

In a statement, an AWS spokesperson said, “We are making progress toward resolving the impaired instances and degraded volumes. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused and appreciate our customers’ patience as we work to restore full service.” Service credits for affected accounts are expected, though formal details have not yet been announced.

Broader Context for Cloud Reliability

The incident underscores ongoing debates about cloud concentration risks. US-East-1 in Northern Virginia remains one of the most heavily used AWS regions globally, powering a significant portion of the internet’s infrastructure. While AWS offers multiple availability zones for redundancy, many customers still concentrate workloads in this popular region for latency and cost reasons.

Competitors Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have used the opportunity to highlight their own multi-region capabilities, though all major providers have experienced similar regional outages in the past. The event may prompt more organizations to review their disaster recovery and business continuity plans, especially those running mission-critical applications.

Advice for Affected Users

For shoppers facing issues on Amazon.com:

• Try refreshing the page or using a different browser/device.
• Clear cache and cookies or attempt an incognito window.
• Check the Amazon app separately, as mobile and desktop experiences can vary.
• Use alternative retailers temporarily if urgent purchases are needed.
• Monitor the official AWS Health Dashboard for updates.

Business customers using AWS services should activate failover protocols, monitor dashboards closely and document any business impact for potential compensation claims.

Long-Term Implications

As Amazon works toward full restoration, attention will turn to any post-incident review and potential infrastructure improvements. The company has a strong track record of learning from such events to enhance overall resilience. However, repeated high-profile outages could push some enterprise customers toward multi-cloud strategies or increased investment in on-premises backups.

For individual consumers, the outage serves as a reminder of how central Amazon has become to daily life — from shopping and streaming to cloud services that power countless websites and apps. While disruptions are relatively rare given the scale of AWS operations, even brief outages can cause significant inconvenience in our increasingly digital world.

As of Thursday evening, partial functionality had returned for most users, though some lingering issues persisted in specific services. Amazon is expected to provide a more detailed update once systems fully stabilize. In the meantime, customers are advised to remain patient and use alternative options where necessary.

The Amazon outage, while disruptive, highlights both the platform’s massive popularity and the challenges of maintaining perfect uptime at global scale. As demand for cloud services and online shopping continues to grow, reliability will remain a critical factor determining which providers earn long-term customer loyalty.

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Genco Shipping & Trading Limited First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call and Presentation. Before we begin, please note that there will be a slide presentation accompanying today’s conference call. That presentation can be obtained from Genco’s website at www.gencoshipping.com.

To inform everyone, today’s conference is being recorded and is now being webcast at the company’s website, www.gencoshipping.com [Operator Instructions]. A webcast replay will also be available via link provided in today’s press release as well as on the company’s website.

At this time, I will now turn the conference over to the company. Please go ahead.

Peter Allen
Chief Financial Officer

Good morning. Before we begin our presentation, I note that in this conference call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements use words such as anticipate, budget, estimate, expect, project, intend, plan, believe and other words in terms of similar meaning in connection with the discussion of potential future events, circumstances or future operating or financial performance.

These forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and observations. For a discussion of factors that could cause results to differ, please see the company’s press release that was issued yesterday, the materials relating to this call posted

For seven years, Barry Honig’s name was dragged through the mud by short sellers who called the companies he backed frauds, scams, and stock schemes.

The media repeated those claims without question. Now the U.S. government has confirmed what Honig always said: it was a coordinated lie.

 What Is a ‘Short-and-Distort’ Scheme?

Most people have heard of ‘pump and dump’ — where someone hypes a stock to drive the price up, then sells. A ‘short-and-distort’ is the opposite. Short sellers bet that a stock will fall, then deliberately spread false negative information to make that happen. It’s illegal. And it’s exactly what the SEC and DOJ found was happening.

 What Exactly Did the Government Find?

In June 2024, the SEC charged Anson Funds Management — a $2.9 billion hedge fund — with running a secret scheme from 2018 to 2023. Here’s how it worked, in plain terms:

1. Anson would quietly ‘short’ a company’s stock — meaning they placed bets that the stock would fall.
2. They then paid Andrew Left of Citron Research to publish false, alarming reports about those same companies.
3. Left would blast these reports out to hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter, CNBC, and his website — calling companies ‘fraud,’ ‘scam,’ or ‘dead.’
4. Investors panicked, sold their shares, the stock crashed, and Anson collected its profits.
5. To hide the payments to Left, Anson funneled the money through a third party called Falcon Research, using fake invoices for ‘research services’ that were never actually performed.

PolarityTE: A Real Company Destroyed by Lies

One of the targets was PolarityTE — a biotech company that had developed SkinTE, a revolutionary product that used a patient’s own skin to heal wounds. Barry Honig and his family entities were the second-largest shareholders, owning nearly 10% of the company.

In June 2018, Citron Research published a report with a headline screaming ‘FRAUD’ in all capitals. The report claimed PolarityTE’s patent was dead — that the USPTO had permanently rejected it and the company had hidden the news.

Both claims were false.

A USPTO ‘final rejection’ is a technical term — it’s a step in the process, not the end of the road. Applicants who continue forward receive a patent roughly 70% of the time. PolarityTE did exactly that, and in February 2021, the USPTO granted the patent. The company was never hiding anything — the patent process simply wasn’t over.

The false narrative about PolarityTE’s patents was demonstrably false — demonstrated by the USPTO allowing its patent, and the class action lawsuit ultimately was dismissed. — Honig v. Anson Funds, First Amended Complaint

But the damage was already done. The stock crashed over 40% on the day of the first attack. Institutional investors fled. PolarityTE lost its financing, declared bankruptcy in 2023, and its shares went to zero. Honig and his family lost millions.

 7 Years of Fake News — Now Confirmed

For years, Barry Honig’s name appeared in articles that treated short-seller reports as gospel truth. Those reports called him a ‘stock promoter’ for ‘failed companies’ — language Citron used to smear anyone connected to its targets. The media amplified the attacks without checking whether the underlying claims were true.

As the new lawsuit filed in May 2026 states, the defendants ‘made false and disparaging statements about PolarityTE and Plaintiffs’ business… with knowledge that they were false or with no reasonable grounds for believing them to be true.’

Honig’s RIOT Blockchain investment — another Citron target — was cleared by the SEC in 2020. RIOT Platforms today is worth billions. MARA Holdings, another company Honig helped build, is also a multi-billion dollar enterprise. The ‘frauds’ turned out to be real companies.

Now It’s Left Who Faces Justice

In July 2024, the Department of Justice indicted Andrew Left on 19 criminal counts — including securities fraud and lying to federal investigators. He faces up to 365 years in prison. His trial is currently scheduled for 2026.

The indictment describes the scheme in detail, including a ‘Hedge Fund A’ that secretly paid Left through a third-party intermediary — matching precisely what the SEC found about Anson Funds.

Ryan Choi, Left’s partner who executed trades at Citron Capital, settled with the SEC and paid over $1.8 million. Anson itself paid $2.25 million in penalties. Hindenburg Research — another short seller connected to the broader network — shut down while investigations were ongoing.

The Bottom Line

Barry Honig didn’t need to wait for a trial to be vindicated. The SEC already confirmed the scheme was real. The DOJ already confirmed PolarityTE was a named target. The patent was already granted. The class action lawsuit was already dismissed.

What took seven years wasn’t the truth — it was the government catching up to it.

The Andrew Left trial may finally put a face and a prison sentence on what was done. But the record is already clear: Barry Honig was the victim of a coordinated, government-confirmed fake news campaign — and the perpetrators are now the ones facing accountability.

Buying a used car can look simple at first, but what you cannot see in plain sight often matters the most.

A vehicle may appear clean, well-maintained, and fairly priced, yet still carry a hidden past that affects its safety, value, and insurance cost. One of the most important things every buyer should understand is whether the car has ever been declared a write-off.

This is where proper vehicle history awareness becomes essential. Services from The Auto Experts help buyers and sellers understand a car’s background clearly so decisions are based on facts rather than assumptions. A quick check can reveal whether a vehicle has been involved in serious damage, repaired, or returned to the road after being classified as a total loss.

Understanding write-off status is not just about avoiding bad deals. It is about protecting your money and ensuring the vehicle you choose is safe to drive.

What Does DVLA Car Written Off Status Really Mean?

When a vehicle is described as a dvla car written off, it means an insurance company has decided the repair costs are higher than the vehicle’s market value. In many cases, insurers classify the car as a total loss because repairing it is no longer financially practical.

However, not every write-off involves severe damage. Some vehicles may have experienced structural issues after a major accident, while others may only have minor cosmetic or non-structural damage. Insurance companies use different categories to identify the severity of the damage and whether the vehicle can safely return to the road after repairs.

For used car buyers, this can create a major challenge. A repaired write-off may look perfectly fine from the outside, making it difficult to identify hidden history through a simple inspection alone. Without checking the vehicle’s records properly, buyers may unknowingly pay full market value for a car with a significant accident history.

That is why completing a proper vehicle history check before purchasing any used car is so important. Reviewing an insurance write off check through The Auto Experts can help buyers confirm whether a car has previously been declared a write-off and understand the type of damage recorded against it. This gives greater confidence when making a purchase decision and helps avoid unexpected risks later.

Why a Write Off Check Is Essential for Used Car Buyers

A write off check is one of the most important steps in the used car buying process because it reveals details that are not always visible during a physical inspection. A car might look well repaired, freshly painted, or even recently serviced, but its past could include serious damage that affects long-term reliability.

For example, a vehicle that has been involved in a major accident may have had structural repairs that are not immediately obvious. Even if the car drives normally, hidden issues can surface later in the form of alignment problems, electrical faults, or reduced safety performance.

This is why relying only on appearance or seller claims is risky. A proper vehicle history check helps you understand the real background of the car, including whether it has been repaired after significant damage or declared a total loss at any point.

The Auto Experts platform is designed to make this process simple and transparent, giving buyers access to reliable vehicle history insights that support smarter decisions. Instead of guessing, you get clear information that helps you avoid unnecessary risk.

You can also explore more about vehicle background checks and ownership insights directly at The Auto Experts.

This helps you stay informed not just about write-offs but also other important vehicle history factors that affect value and safety.

Why Write-Off History Matters More Than Ever in Today’s Market

The used car market has become increasingly competitive, and prices continue to fluctuate. In this environment, buyers are often under pressure to make quick decisions. Unfortunately, this also increases the chances of missing important history details.

A vehicle that has been previously declared a write-off may still be legally roadworthy after repair, but its value will almost always be lower than a similar car with a clean history. Without proper verification, buyers risk paying full price for a vehicle that should be valued significantly lower.

This is where understanding both dvla car written off status and complete vehicle history becomes critical. It helps buyers negotiate better prices and avoid unexpected repair costs later.

Sellers are not always required to highlight every detail, especially in private sales, which makes independent checks even more important. Having access to accurate historical data ensures transparency and builds trust between buyers and sellers.

Platforms like The Auto Experts play an important role in making this information accessible in a simple format. Instead of dealing with complicated records or unclear reports, buyers get a clear picture of what the vehicle has been through.

Final Thoughts

A used car purchase should always be based on clarity, not assumptions. Understanding whether a vehicle has been through a write-off situation can significantly impact your decision, both financially and in terms of safety.

A proper write off check helps you avoid hidden risks, while a detailed vehicle history check ensures you are aware of any serious past incidents. Combined with reliable vehicle history insights from The Auto Experts, you gain confidence in every purchase you make.

Before committing to any used car, always take a moment to understand its background. A few minutes of checking can save you from long-term issues and unexpected costs.

FAQs

1. What does a DVLA car written off status indicate?
   It means the vehicle was previously declared a total loss by an insurer due to damage that was too expensive to repair.
2. Can a written-off car be driven again?
   Yes, some write-off categories allow cars to be repaired and returned to the road, but they may still have reduced value and risk factors.
3. Why is a write off check important before buying a used car?
   It helps reveal hidden accident history, ensures fair pricing, and protects you from buying a vehicle with serious past damage.

Adults in the United Kingdom are far more willing to save than invest when it comes to managing their wealth, but what’s driving our preferences? And why are we more wary of stocks and shares than our American cousins?

According to data compiled by Dr Sam Pybis, Senior Lecturer in Economics at Manchester Metropolitan University, only 23% of individuals in the UK have invested in the stock market, excluding workplace pensions.

This represents a significant shortfall compared to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where almost two-thirds of adults in the US have made investments.

Interestingly, the findings have shown that American consumers are generally more willing to take financial risks, which is a major contrast to their UK counterparts.

Risk Plays a Major Role

The risks associated with investing have reentered the spotlight recently after Chancellor Rachel Reeves opted to cut the tax-free annual allowance for savings-focused Cash ISAs to £12,000 while keeping Stocks and Shares ISA allowances at £20,000.

As speculation over the future of Cash ISAs was mounting, a YouGov poll found that just 31% of UK residents were ‘willing’ to invest in Stocks and Shares ISAs instead, with an overwhelming majority citing risk as their primary concern.

Of those surveyed, 65% of respondents claimed that investing was ‘too risky’ compared to saving, while 5% believed that Cash ISAs were more likely to generate a good return.

Is Saving More Reliable?

Are UK savers justified in their risk aversion when it comes to investing? The answer depends on your risk tolerance.

According to Unbiased data, the last 10 years have seen fixed-rate Cash ISA returns generate 1.21% annually on average. In contrast, Stocks and Shares ISAs have returned 9.64% each year.

However, it’s important to note that past performance never guarantees future results. There are plenty of cases of Cash ISAs outperforming Stocks and Shares ISAs over time, and the recent surge in both the S&P 500 and FTSE 100, driven partly by the ongoing artificial intelligence boom, has contributed to the higher returns enjoyed by investors of late.

During periods of stock market volatility, saving can be a strong hedge against dwindling equities.

Thanks to a combination of higher interest rates and stock market sell-offs, UK residents who tend to save have enjoyed many periods where their savings have outperformed investments.

Moneyfacts data shows that the average Cash ISA rate returned 1.71% between February 2023 and February 2024, while Stocks and Shares ISAs made a loss of 3.27% over the same period.

While there’s no definitive right or wrong answer about which approach to wealth management is most effective, it’s clear that risks can certainly leave investors with periods of time where their portfolios lose money, even if history shows well-selected stocks and shares generally grow substantially over time.

Saving Isn’t Always Risk-Free

It’s also important to highlight that opting for saving rather than investing doesn’t come without its own risks.

If you opt to open a savings account, you can still make a loss in real terms if your rate of return fails to surpass the rate of inflation.

When inflation rises above the AER offered by your savings account provider, the cost of living will rise faster than you can grow your wealth, meaning that your spending power is still weakening.

With this in mind, savers must keep an eye on the rates that providers offer them and assess whether they still reflect their financial goals even when accounting for the rising cost of living through inflation rates and forecasts.

What are the Best Ways to Save?

There are plenty of ways to open fixed-rate savings accounts that can help to grow your wealth more effectively.

One of the best and most tax-efficient ways to save is to open a Cash ISA. The biggest advantage of Cash ISAs is that they are a tax-free wrapper, meaning that all the money you make with your account can be accessed without incurring any income tax.

Each tax year, you can deposit up to £20,000 in your Cash ISA, every tax year, while safe in the knowledge that none of your earnings will fall into the hands of the taxman. However, it’s also important to keep in mind that this £20,000 allowance will fall to £12,000 beginning in April 2027.

Making the Most of Your Savings

Opting to save rather than invest is a great way to generate predictable returns on your deposits, paving the way for a low-risk approach to building your wealth over time.

Although it’s important to keep factors like inflation rates in mind, saving is a great way to more effectively look after your money over time, and Cash ISAs open the door to tax-efficient earnings, which can make a huge difference over time thanks to the power of compounded interest.

The UK may be a nation of savers, but this approach holds plenty of long-term value for individuals, with more residents able to relax safe in the knowledge that their funds are well-protected against risk.