Innoviz Technologies Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
November 8, 2023

Key Takeaways

  • Despite the conflict in Israel, Innoviz reported no meaningful operational impact and delivered the final SOP version of its perception software for the BMW 7 Series on time.
  • The company has entered SOP with its BMW Gen 1 program and delivered milestones for both the Volkswagen Group and BMW Gen 2 programs, positioning Innoviz for what it expects to be a record Q4 revenue.
  • Innoviz’s Level 4 autonomous shuttle program is moving into SOP with six LIDAR units per vehicle, targeting new markets like airports and campuses for fully driverless people movers.
  • The second-generation Innoviz2 platform cuts BOM costs by 70% while boosting range and resolution, aiming to drive content per vehicle over $1,000 and grow higher-margin software revenue.
  • A robust RFQ pipeline with several top-10 OEMs in final price negotiations, backed by a $65 million capital raise, extends Innoviz’s runway and supports closing 1–2 major new production awards.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Innoviz Technologies Q3 2023
00:00 / 00:00

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning. This is Rob Moffett, Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at Innoviz. And I want to welcome you to our earnings conference call. Joining us today are Omer Kalev, Chief Executive Officer and Eldar Segla, Chief Financial Officer. Following their opening remarks, we will open the call to your questions.

Operator

I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded and will be available on the Investor Relations section of our website

Speaker 1

at ir.innoviz.

Operator

Tech. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that our discussion today will include forward looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to future events and the future financial performance of Innovus. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. Forward looking statements made today speak only to our expectations as of today, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise them. For a discussion of some important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward looking statements, please see the Risk Factors section of our Form 20 F filed with the SEC on March 9, 2023.

Operator

I will now turn the call over to Omer. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before we begin our business commentary, I wanted to spend a moment on the situation in Israel. The safety and security of our employees is of the utmost importance. And I can report that everyone at INUVI is safe. With a small portion of the local workforce serving in the reserves, the rest of our team has stepped up to cover what is needed.

Speaker 2

And I want to thank them for their incredible fortitude at this challenging time. Innovis was able to remain open with no meaningful operational impact. As a reminder, we are located in the center of the country, a good distance away from the conflict zone. All of our automotive customers are located outside of Israel, and our high volume manufacturing sites are in the United States and Germany with a third plan for Asia. Determined to not let the situation slow us down, during the week of the attack, we achieved an important milestone on time, delivering the final SOP version of the perception software of the BMW 7 Series launch.

Speaker 2

We work closely with the teams at Magna and BMW to complete testing and lock the final version of the software that will be installed on the vehicles in the coming weeks. Since then, we've also delivered on milestones for the Volkswagen Group program and the BMW Gen 2 program, all while managing audits, testing and negotiating with multiple OEMs in our RFQ pipeline and staying on track to deliver record revenues for the Q4. With that said, let's turn to our BMW SOP. In the early weeks of Q3, we moved forward on a very important milestone in our company's history, moving into SOP with our BMW Gen 1 program. The components are shipped to Magna for final assembly at a plant in Michigan and then head to BMW for installation on the 7 Series.

Speaker 2

And as I mentioned earlier, we also locked in the final SOP ready version of our AI enabled perception software and shifted on time to BMW as well. We've been pointing to the back half of 'twenty three launch for a while. So to get to this phase is a huge win. And I believe we are building a track record of credibility that includes delivering on our goals and timelines. I mentioned this on the Glass call, but we still get a lot of questions from investors on BMW plan for lighter and level 3 driving.

Speaker 2

BMW blog did a wonderful article and video in August summarizing BMW Group's plan for the level 37 series. In the video, you can see the car driving seamlessly through a variety of scenarios and hear more about BMW's plans and timeline for deploying the technology. If you haven't watched it yet, I encourage you to go to bmwblog.com or search for it on YouTube. As we go through the rest the year, I'm sure you will continue to hear more details about BMW strategy for automated driving. I also suspect you will see a growing amount of media coverage on the vehicles, particularly as they start to arrive in dealerships and get on the road.

Speaker 2

We continue to expect vehicles on the road later this year. We will also be amplifying this huge milestone on our end, particularly at CES, where we plan to have a version of the lighter enabled 7 Sears that are on booth. If you're going to be in Las Vegas for the show, we would love to have you to stop by. While the 7 Series was always planned to be our initial flagship launch for the Innovis 1, we've said in the past that our technology was on several models and variants within the BMW Group and our efforts are now shifting towards integration with additional models. We hope to be able to update you with more developments of this topic in the coming quarters.

Speaker 2

Needless to say, moving forward on this important program is a source of great pride at Innovis, not only internally, but also externally. It sends a strong signal to other OEMs that we can reach SOP and hit our goals on end milestones. It also further differentiates us from our competition. There are a number of other lighter companies out there claiming to compete with us in the automotive glider space, but some don't have even a single serious production awarded. And some have awards, but have yet to execute on SOP related milestones.

Speaker 2

From our experience, those who haven't executed on these milestones don't even know how much they don't know at this point. And as we transition from SOP preparation to steady state manufacturing, it frees up a lot of bandwidth, both physically and mentally, enabling us to concentrate even more of our efforts on winning next round of business that are currently in our RFI and RFQ pipeline. The other program that is moving into SOPs are shutter program. As a reminder, this is a full level 4 program. The customer is a leading automotive supplier, who is building this vehicle directly in order to become an early leader in the rapidly growing autonomous shuttle market.

Speaker 2

We expect this program to be fully driverless electric vehicle capable of carrying over 20 passengers and the ability to operate 24 hours a day. The earliest applications are likely to be people movers in environments like airports, college campuses, private communities and corporate campuses. But the charter is also expected to be capable of operating in mixed traffic and dedicated lands. This opens it up to urban centers and possibly even suburban environments, where it could become a lower cost or much more flexible alternative to legacy public transportation models. The public transportation operating model has barely changed since the move to from trolley and cable cars to buses nearly 100 years ago.

Speaker 2

This is the end market, an end market that we believe is prime for disruption through automation. In the initial stages, the shutters can complement existing bus and train transportation systems, possibly linking different modes of transportation together or connecting otherwise uneconomical routes. Over time, it's not hard to imagine the autonomous routes increasingly dislocating the legacy routes as adoption grows. This secular growth opportunity could also extend to the other level 4 program that we are working on. The light commercial vehicle program that we announced during the Q1.

Speaker 2

That program remains on track for a mid decker SOP with a healthy growth in samples between now and then. Another thing to keep in mind with these level 4 programs is that they utilize multiple lighter units. Most level 4 typically deploy anywhere between 3 to 6 lighters per vehicle. In fact, the shuttle program that we're issuing later this year initially planned to 4 lighters per vehicle, 1 in each corner of the shuttle, but they have since moved to 6 lighters design after incorporating 2 additional units on the sides with a wider field of view. Not only does this increase the dollar content per vehicle, but it also shows the flexibility of what our LIDAR are able to bring to the table, ranging from ultra long range forward facing LIDAR to wide field of view mounted LIDAR and anything in between.

Speaker 2

With only a minimal change to our hardware or software. And while we're on the topic of growing content per vehicle, I wanted to offer a little more color on the 2nd generation program that we are developing for BMW. Last quarter, we shared that we have begun development of an all new 2nd generation platform that is built around Innovus 2 sensor and our AI enabled perception software stack. We also spoke in detail about how we have the potential to meaningfully grow our software content and dollar value. In this quarter, I wanted to give you a little bit more color on what the overall change in the content per vehicle could look like.

Speaker 2

A key part of our long term strategy is to drive the price of the Lighthouse sensor lower in order to drive adoption rates higher. Tailwinds from potentially rapid increases in volumes as we move up the S curve have the potentially of the opportunity to be meaningfully positive net contributor to both the revenue and profit line. But as we drive sensor costs lower, our goal is to continue to drive content per vehicle higher by expanding into new products categories. So particularly at this point, I think it would be helpful to compare how our business model in CPV has evolved over time. In the 1st generation program with BMW, we were operating as a fuel to supplier, selling only components to Magna, not a full layer to BMW.

Speaker 2

Magna takes those components, integrates them into other parts of the hardware and then sells and finished the finished LIGR to BMW. We were only capturing a portion of the total system value around $600 to $700 per vehicle. Since winning that contract in 2018, we've undergone 2 transformative changes. First, we transitioned from a Tier 2 supplier to a Tier 1, capturing a much larger portion of the economics and moving from selling components to selling full systems. This moves also increases the amount of non recurring engineering or NREs revenues available to us.

Speaker 2

The second position was moving from Innovis 1 to Innovis 2. Thanks to several technological and engineering breakthroughs, we moved from a design that was built on 4 lasers and 4 detectors to a design built on a single laser single detector. This along with the host of other changes resulted in a bit of material bomb that was roughly 70% lower than in U. S. 1.

Speaker 2

This was a massive reduction in costs and these changes were key catalysts for our Tier 1 design win. With Volkswagen in 2022 and the big acceleration in commercial activity we have seen since then. Despite the 70% reduction in material costs, we were still able to grow the total content per vehicle into the $500 to $1,000 range, thanks to our pivot being to being a Tier 1, which enabled us to capture the full system value. Looking forward, we believe we can use the Gen 2 system that we are developing as a potential template for future programs. Here, we would continue to leverage the 70% lower bond of the Innovis 2 to drive higher lighter adoption, while pairing it with a higher value and more robust version of our perception software and all new products like the Innovis Core AI Compute Model and the minimum risk maneuver software.

Speaker 2

By providing more value and functionality to customers, we believe we can set we can get CPV nicely over the $1,000 mark, while also increasing our mix of higher margin software revenue. We are very focused on making this template for future customers. Next, I want to give a quick update on Volkswagen. Overall, our program with BW continues to progress nicely. And the sensor suite for the initial program continues to evolve.

Speaker 2

We moved from the A sample to the B sample back in March, and we continue to test and fine tune within the B sample stage, having released our new B2 sample during this quarter. Each new version unlocks incremental levels of performance, functionality, industrialization. And the newest version is based on our 2nd generation custom ASIC. Last quarter, we showed a few that we have finished the tape out of the ASIC. The new chip has 2 key benefits.

Speaker 2

The first is that it unlocks a configuration that enables much more range, taking our maximum detection range detection from 300 meters to 450. And the second is that it can support much higher resolution. The more powerful chip enables us to produce millions of more points. In fact, we were able to nearly double the total number of points that we can process per second. This can power higher density point cloud with even better resolution than before.

Speaker 2

Continuous improvement like this in both our sensor and software split are adding our conversations with OEMs. With Volkswagen specifically, we are in advanced conversations exploring the potential addition of multiple platforms that would be incremental to our initial sales production award. We hope to have more to share on this in the coming quarters. But as I always say, video speaks better than words. I'm excited to share with you some of the early point out footage from the new ASIC.

Speaker 2

Last quarter, when I shared the update, we said that we hope to get close to high definition camera like levels of resolution with the added benefits of true 3d dimensional LIDAR based map. As you can see in the video, we're essentially There is still and this is still an early version of the point cloud. We're confident that it will only continue to improve from here. We are working quickly to bring this new level of functionality into the hands of our customers and prospects. Customer interest has been strong and Innovis2 shipments were 102% up, quarter over quarter in the 3rd quarter.

Speaker 2

Keep in mind, the benefits aren't just in the sensor side, the dramatically higher range and resolution for us to into more points of data. That data fuels our AI tools, including the neural networks that are critical part of our software development. Faster neural network streaming translates into better perception software and better perception software unlock new features like enabling vehicles to travel at higher speed or operate in more complex environments. Continuous environment improvements like this in both our sensor and software suite are a big part of why we are seeing so much commercial momentum, including in our RFI and RFQ pipeline. As a reminder, we had a record number of programs moved from the RFI to the RFQ process in the Q1 of 'twenty three.

Speaker 2

And now over half of the 10 to 15 programs in the pipeline are in the RFI stage. There are big differences between the RFI request for information and RFI RFQ, request for quotation. And LFI is much less structured process and we've seen some programs remain in the LFI stage for over 2 years, whereas others have transitioned to the RFQ in less than 6 months. At the RFI stage, OEMs may just be testing systems, performing RFP activities, collecting data. Typically, the programs are working towards the production launch, but they don't move into the RFQ stage until a clear decision to go forward with the program has been made.

Speaker 2

At that point, the OEM has typically fully decided that the vehicle is going to see this production committed to a timeline for production and has decided the vehicle will include the LIDAR. The OEM dedicates cost and resources to the program, including entire engineering, supply chain and finance and product management teams. This represents a meaningful investment from the OEM and it's much more tangible signal of a commitment to the program. The step up in the RFQs that we've seen in 'twenty three appears to be a strong signal that the lighter industry is maturing and the level 3 autonomy megatrend is beginning. We believe it is solid evidence that OEMs are increasingly in a race to deploy the technology.

Speaker 2

Failure to stay ahead of the curve, particularly for luxury brands runs the risk of potentially competitive irrelevancy and resulting market share losses and could do long term damage to a brand. It also runs the risk of missing an important source of profit and the transition to recurring revenues for OEMs. Missing the opportunity to deploy must have consumer tech like Level 3 autonomy may not only result in lost volumes and market share, but it could also translate into lost profit dollars on advanced features. Many of the OEMs that we talk to are looking for opportunities to grow their recurrent revenue streams, with FICUS lasting increasingly longer and with EVs potentially driving that trend even further. It seems that the OEMs are hungry for opportunities to complement their one time sale with recurrent revenues.

Speaker 2

The industry has had some success with products like telematics and connectivity, But in my opinion, the single best opportunity for recurring revenues lies in monthly subscription for autonomous driving packages and the ongoing over the air software that will underpin them in the future of software defined vehicles. I believe this has been part of the driving force behind multiple audience pivoting from RFIs to RFQs more or less at the same time. I think there is a growing fear of missing this opportunity, this potentially massive megatrend. Basically its corporate form. In fact, if you look at our RFQs, the majority of the programs are with the top 10 global OEM.

Speaker 2

This is a lot of shots on goal. We don't need to win them all. We already have BMW Volkswagen Group as customers, and they collectively represent 15% of global automotive production. We believe that if you can secure just 1 or 2 major OEMs as customer and we will have a substantial lead in what we expect will be a winner that makes most market. These programs converted to RFQ at different points and are moving along different timelines.

Speaker 2

All of the programs have moved on to various phases of audits of the technology, focusing on quality software supply chain and more. The first phase typically revolves around the product itself, focusing on the sensor and software suite. There can often be a point in the middle where 2 or at most 3 players are shortlisted, and the focus moves away from the technology and motors and manufacturing strategy and operations. Within the group of Allied Qs, 3 of the programs are moving faster and went through the financial audit and certification of high volume manufacturing stage in the early fall. These programs have since moved into the final stage, which includes definitive price negotiations and detailed planning of post nomination milestones.

Speaker 2

This was a critical factor behind our capital raise in August. When we look at who are we competing against most often in these other few years, it's not the early stage that a few play companies most investors typically assume instead it's the most established few ones. And while they try to compete on their operating history, we compete on our technology. And this is a matchup that we will take all day long. Because we are often told by customers that our technology is better.

Speaker 2

And we've won against these bigger Tier 1s before, We've won on BMW, we've won on Volkswagen based on our technology. And I'm confident that we can do this again and again. With that in mind, we felt it was important to keep any bidding process focused on the technology advantage. That is why we undertook the capital raise. It was successful for us as it accomplished 3 critical things.

Speaker 2

1, it raised additional $65,000,000 giving us an even longer cash runway. 2, it showed that we have continued support from our largest existing institutional shareholders. And 3, it allowed us to move into the final phase of several RFQs. And as a signal of our confidence, several of us participated in the deal. My fellow co founder, Oren Buskila and I both bought stock during the transaction.

Speaker 2

And our Chairman of the Board, Michae Steinberg made an open market purchase the week after. We are heavily invested in Innovis alongside you. We are confident that if we win even just 1 or 2 of these deals with the help of the capital raise, the long term outcome will have been worth the short term volatility. Because when we look at the Ligar industry, we believe our next one to 2 deals have the potential to permanently shape the industry. You've heard me talk about the flywheel effect before.

Speaker 2

In this industry, we believe that wins will lead to more wins. First of all, this is a safety critical technology. And each time an OEM chooses us as a partner, it can send a message of confidence to other OEMs and make it easier to choose the new wins. There can be a tremendous amount of signal value in every win. 2nd, we've already have serious production awards with 2 out of 3 main autonomy platform providers, as we are quoting an RFQ right now with the 3rd.

Speaker 2

Being already integrated into the platform software makes it less costly and less risky to choose us as the lighter vendor and it can speed up the OEM time to market. The third, more wins translates into higher volumes, leading to more purchasing power and lower unit cost. In fact, I think you can already see some of the early proof of the flywheel effect in motion for us. After winning BMW in 2018, it took us over 3 years to win our next production award. From there, it took us a full year to announce the next one.

Speaker 2

You can see the pace of the activity has clearly accelerated in the past year. And if we can finalize this advanced stage RFQs, it will offer even more evidence that the flywheel effect is working in our favor. Turning to our 2023 targets. We've raised portions of our guidance twice year to date. In the Q1, we raised the high end of the range of our targets for additional programs from existing customers following our announcement of the light commercial vehicle.

Speaker 2

And in the Q2, we raised our revenue guidance following increased visibility into higher volumes and NRE revenues. We also took the upper end of the net new NRE booking range higher following progress we're still seeing in our RFQ pipeline coupled with the scope of the NRE awards being quoted on the programs that are progressing the fastest. Today, we are reiterating our targets, including guidance for 2023 revenue of $15,000,000 to $20,000,000 which represents year over year line growth of 150% to 2 30%. Coming into the year, we flagged that revenue would drop in the Q1 as our BMW program pricing transitioned from central pricing to production pricing, which was more of a 10x decline in our initial ASPs, but would be an offset by higher volumes in the later quarters. Following that reset in pricing, we said revenues would grow meaningfully quarter over quarter, particularly in the back half of the year as we approach SOP and unlock NRE revenues.

Speaker 2

Revenue proceeds to grow 45% sequentially in the 2nd quarter and we were followed by an even stronger 138% quarter over quarter in the 3rd quarter. If you consider our $15,000,000 to $20,000,000 revenue target range, this subtract year to date revenue of around $6,000,000 it implies the 4th quarter revenue in the range of $9,000,000 to $14,000,000 At the midpoint, that would represent roughly 2 30% quarter over quarter growth and over 600% year over year growth. It has the potential to not only be our largest quarter ever, but larger than any of our prior full year revenue numbers. I said this not only because I'm proud of what we are delivering, but also as a further evidence of us delivering on what we say we are going to do. We said that Q1 was the trough.

Speaker 2

We delivered 2 quarter of strong sequential growth, and we are now in the process of potentially delivering the loudest quarterly revenue number ever. And with that, I will turn the call over to Edel.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Omer. Good morning, everyone. Starting with cash, we ended Q3 2023 with approximately $164,000,000 in cash, bank deposit, marketable securities and short term restricted cash on the balance sheet. With our cost structure being largely matured, our operating cash outlays remained mostly stable during the quarter on a normalized basis. We did defer roughly 2,900,000 of R and D expenses as a result of booking NRE revenues.

Speaker 3

While this drove lower than normal operating expenses in the Q3, we expect to recognize the deferred expenses in the coming quarter as COGS. At a higher level, on a normalized basis, you can see that our cost structure has been mostly flat since the second half of twenty twenty 2. The bulk of the growth in our cost structure occurred during our transition from a Tier 2 to a Tier 1 relating to the Volkswagen Group award in 2022. As we have said before, we with the transition sorry, as we said before, with the transition to a Tier 1 mostly behind us, we do not expect material increase in our cost structure. One of the factors behind this flexibility is our transition to SOP with the Innovis 1.

Speaker 3

As this program transition from development stages to high volume manufacturing, it freed up headcount to work on either the RFQ pipeline or the Innovis 2 SOP. This gives us meaningful flexibility going forward without the need to significant growth in our fixed costs. Moving to the income statement, revenue in Q3 2023 came in at $3,500,000 compared to Q2 2023 revenues of $1,500,000 delivering a 138% quarter over quarter increase. On a year over year basis, it compares to Q3 2022 revenues, which were impacted by our headquarter's move of $900,000 delivering growth of nearly 300% year over year. On the cost side, operating expenses for Q3 2023 were $27,800,000 a decrease from $31,300,000 in Q3 2022.

Speaker 3

As I mentioned earlier, Q3 2020 3 operating expenses saw $2,900,000 of R and D expenses deferred into future quarters and will be recognized as COGS to match costs with future NRE revenues. This quarter's operating expenses included $5,000,000 of share based compensation compared to $4,900,000 in Q3 2022. Research and development expenses for Q3 2023 were $20,700,000 a decrease from $24,200,000 in Q3 2022. The quarter's R and D expenses included $3,100,000 attributable to share based compensation compared to $3,200,000 in Q2 2022. In conclusion, we are delivering on the gross cadence that we laid out coming into the year.

Speaker 3

Q1 2023 was the trough. We delivered a 45% quarter over quarter growth in Q2, 138% in Q3 and have line of sight to another meaningful step up in the 4th quarter. Even more importantly, we are executing on this growth while dealing with record level of RFQ activity. We expect to finish the year on a very strong note with continued momentum for 2024 and beyond. And with that, I will turn the call back to Omer.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Ildar. Okay. Before turning the call over to the Q and A, I wanted to offer a few final remarks. In 2022, we hinted at the major new OEM customer, and months later, we delivered Volkswagen. Coming into the year, we said that we're working on a program expansion, and we delivered on the light commercial vehicle program in the Q1 and announced development of the 2nd generation system for BMW last quarter.

Speaker 2

Then in the Q3, we delivered on our BMW SOP timeline while also moving 3 RFQs past financial and high volume manufacturing audits and into final phases of price negotiation and post nomination milestone alignment. My team and I spent a lot of time visiting OEMs across Europe, Asia and North America and in the past few months. And we have several more trips planned before year end. We will be in Germany next week taking our new B tube sample with the new custom ASIC to existing customers and new ones and postdocs. We are very excited about what we achieved, and I want to personally deliver these new samples.

Speaker 2

We have things that we really want to deliver on for you that we think we are very close at hand. And we will not we will work nonstop until we accomplish them. Thank you very much. And we can move to the Q and A.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Mark Delaney from Goldman Sachs.

Speaker 1

Sachs. You spoke about having a very active RFI and RFQ pipeline. I'm hoping you can share your latest views on the potential timing for new wins and your confidence in reaching the 2 new series production awards with new customers this year?

Speaker 2

Yes. So as I said during my talk, the team is working intensively on several fronts with different OEMs. As we speak, we are conducting an audit. We have several audits already in this month. We are expecting at least 2 of these three customers that we talked about that are in later stage to make a decision still this year according to their plans.

Speaker 2

So we are working towards that.

Speaker 1

Understood. Thank you, Omer. And then my other question was around the shuttle program and hoping to better understand how that's developing. You mentioned more LiDAR is now being used. And with them making that change and also being relatively close to the start of production.

Speaker 1

Can you help us understand if that is going to impact either the timing or magnitude of the ramp? And also could you clarify if the additional LiDARs that will be used, are those definitively going to Innoviz? Or is that something that's still being evaluated by the customer?

Speaker 2

Okay. So possibly I did not describe it right. This is a decision made more than 6 months ago or maybe more than that. We were just reflecting the fact that several that every Level 4 program uses more than one LIDAR. And that was an example of a program that initially started with 4, but later became 6, but some time ago.

Speaker 2

So that not it's obviously it's an innovative slider, not anyone else. And it's not affecting the timeline.

Speaker 1

Understood. I'll pass it along. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Our next question comes from the line of Andreas Sheppard from Cantor.

Speaker 5

Hey, guys. Good morning and good afternoon. Can you hear me

Speaker 2

okay? Yes.

Speaker 5

Wonderful. Thank you. And congrats on the quarter and all of the developments and congrats on the SOP being finally here. Wanted to maybe just ask, how should we be thinking about that BMW contracts continuing to ramp up as we head into next year. You provided revenue guidance for Q4, which is very helpful.

Speaker 5

Just kind of curious if maybe you can give us a little bit more color as to how and what we should expect into 2024? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes. I'll start and probably let Eldar take the lead later. BMW is currently launching with the i7. The additional volume would start in a moderate manner. We do expect another model to be launching next year.

Speaker 2

That's the plan right now. In terms of guidance, I'm not sure that we are providing such right now.

Speaker 3

We definitely will provide guidance going forward. But we do we are hopeful based on the pipeline that we see that we will have a growing revenue cadence going forward as well.

Speaker 5

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And maybe can you give us a sense around gross margins? There was a pretty significant improvement in this quarter as evidenced by the BMW contract ramping up.

Speaker 5

Any sense on kind of how we should continue to think about gross margins for next quarter and again into next year? I know you're not providing guidance, but would you expect those to continue to gradually improve quarter over quarter or what's the best way to think about that? Thank you.

Speaker 3

So obviously, as we get to production volumes and as the products mature, we are expecting that the gross margin due to these factors on the production and the sales of Lydars will improve. This is one factor that comes into play. And the second factor, which is also very important and dominant, is the NRE recognition as we gain more and more NRE and are able to recognize more and more NRE, and this will be an important factor both for this year and next year, we will see that positive impact on our gross margins.

Speaker 5

Very helpful, Eldar. Thank you. And just maybe if I could squeeze in one last one. With the 100 and $64,000,000 now in cash and equivalents, just remind me what is the expected run rate with that cash on hand or? So

Speaker 3

as you said, we have a strong balance sheet. We just in August, we raised additional funding to have this strong balance sheet. In addition this balance sheet, if you take it linearly, brings us well into 2025. In addition, we are have growing revenues, which will balance off some of the expenses. We are expecting to win additional programs.

Speaker 3

As we said before, our pipeline, our current pipeline is over 100 and $50,000,000 potential in NREs. So once we win these additional programs, this means additional Ednares. And this brings us far and beyond to where we need.

Speaker 5

Thanks again, guys, and congrats on the quarter. I'll pass it on.

Speaker 4

Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Cassidy from Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Yes. Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on the great progress. The number of RFQs that you're working on now and if you close on 2 of those, the other ones are still in play as we get into 2024, they're just being delayed. Can you maybe give a timeline on some of the other programs?

Speaker 2

So we said that we expect some to make a decision this year. I think that by the progress we're seeing with the other RFQs, I would say they are split between the Q1 and the Q2, also taking into account the timeline in which they plan to launch. So I would expect that it will not take longer than that, but that's how I see it right now.

Speaker 6

Okay, great. And maybe just so to understand a little more with the 6 LiDARs being controlled by the perception software. Is there a maximum number of LiDAR the software can handle?

Speaker 2

It's not about the software. It's about the compute platform that eventually needs to process the point cloud, which of course, as you increase the point density and frame rate, you require stronger compute platforms. But I can also share that one of the things that the team has substantially improved between the 1st generation and the 2nd generation is also the architecture in which they are performing their algorithms. Inovis 1, the transition from Inovis 1 to Inovis 2 was quite meaningful. We were able to improve the performance by more than 30 times, and we were able to reduce the cost by 70%.

Speaker 2

Obviously, once you improve the density so significantly, you need to take into account that the compute that cannot improve by that factor. So of course, you do need to take, I would say, almost a revolutionary step. And I think many of the learnings that the team had during the first program when we developed the perception software for BMW was very much about understanding the, I would say the boundaries and how we can significantly optimize it. So we are eventually the number of platforms that are used by our customers are not many. They are primarily 2 or 3 main platforms that everyone is using, either it's NVIDIA or Mobileye or Qualcomm, maybe also WNSAS.

Speaker 2

So we are very familiar with all of these platforms. Some of our work with these platform players is in order to learn about their hardware accelerators, so we can make use of them as best as possible. So we can we don't need to exhaust the power consumption and the processing power. So I would say it's part of the reason why the company that is developing the LIDAR needs to have its hand very much involved in the software development. I think that doing that in a split between different vendors, the outcome would very likely not be very, very good.

Speaker 6

Okay. Thanks for that explanation. And just one other question as we look at the competitive landscape and we've been talking about this market is going to consolidate. Are there assets out there that would help Innovis

Speaker 2

or is there

Speaker 6

any plan where your competitors start falling off the pace that maybe you can pick up some assets to help you move forward?

Speaker 2

So I mean, of course, when we are aware of the different companies in the space, and I would say that the motivation for Innovia is to possibly look on the assets that are done by others. We will feel that there is a complementary solution that we are missing. So far, since our focus is primarily automotive and winning those RFQs, I don't see a gap in our offering. But we continue to look on the different counterparts and but so far I don't see a good fit.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Garrigan from Westpark Capital. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Yes. Hey, Omar and Eldar. Thanks for taking my questions. Let me echo my congrats on the progress. Going back to Mark's question regarding hitting your targets this year and you're in the final stages of these RFQs and just kind of waiting at this point in time.

Speaker 7

Just kind of wondering if these decisions don't get made in the next few months, what would be a potential cause for a delay? I mean, would EV programs not working out some companies cause a delay at all or something that you might have seen with Volvo where the software doesn't develop?

Speaker 2

No, it's maybe to explain what are the complexities related to an RFQ and what might cause a delay. You need to understand that once you get the nomination, eventually you need to start execute on a plan that was aligned between both sides. This means that the plan is to consider everything that needs to happen from nomination to SOP. So you can imagine that the amount of details that need to be decided in line between the two sides is quite meaningful. The integration of the sensor into the car, including the connectivity, the software, thermal interfaces and etcetera, really the amount of details that are needed to be considered when taking that claim into account, how many.

Speaker 2

And it is important to align on everything because once the carmaker is choosing a supplier, they basically cannot change anything in the plant. Otherwise, it drives change requests that are quite expensive usually to the OEM. So the RFQ process, while they are auditing the supplier, part of the process is also to get to a clear alignment between both sides and all of the details. And that takes sometimes a lot of time because it also requires some things become more clear to the OEM on things that he needs to do and take into account. And sometimes he's not aware of it and sometimes it takes for them a more holistic view and talk with other parts of the vehicle car teams.

Speaker 2

But generally, even if decision is pushed, it's mostly technical. And even if it's not done in 1 quarter, then maybe it's done in the 2nd quarter. It doesn't necessarily and by the way, they usually when they change the RFQ timing, they don't change the SOP time. So it adds pressure to all sides. I wouldn't consider a push off an RFQ decision as a meaningful element in the industry, I would say.

Speaker 7

Okay, got it. That makes sense. And then I know you have a strong relationship with the ADAS Compute platform companies, Qualcomm Mobileye, NVIDIA. How have these partnerships been beneficial if at all in helping with potentially understand which platform

Speaker 2

they target to use. Sometimes they are understand which platform they target to use. Sometimes they already know, sometimes they are still assessing. These are important details because on the RFQ process, as I said, a big part of the RFQ is aligned on the tasks and the costs that are involved also related to those tasks. When we show that we are already doing some of those tasks, we on one side, we lower the risk related to potentially integration risk, and we shortened obviously the time line.

Speaker 2

But in some cases, we can also share cost of these activities with the OEM and overall providing them better NRE offering. So right now, we are already working with 2 out of those 3 that you mentioned. And with some of the OEMs that we are completing, these are the planned platforms. This also by the way, this is also the motivation of the platform player. Talking with the head of one of them was clear.

Speaker 2

He made it very clear to me that their motivation is similar. One of the things that a platform player is providing is it's called the HIL, hardware in the loop, which means that it's a full hardware emulation of the entire platform. It's a very costly setup and takes time and money. And their motivation of using the same sensor on different platform is high. So I think it's mutually beneficial for us and the platform that other OEMs would use the same sensor.

Speaker 2

We said also that we're currently working with the 3rd cohort and now at Q decision. And I believe we have a good chance in getting it.

Speaker 7

Okay, perfect. I appreciate the color. Congrats again on the progress. Thanks, guys. Thank

Speaker 2

you.

Speaker 4

There are no further questions. Thank you for your participation. This concludes our call today. You may now disconnect.

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