LiDAR maker AEye brings in $768K, loses $23M in Q3

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AEye’s 4Sight intelligent sensing platform has an adaptive architecture for different levels of autonomy. | Source: AEye

AEye brought in $768,000 in revenue in the third quarter of 2022 and reported a GAAP loss of $23.6 million. Non-GAAP losses totaled $17 million in the quarter. AEye ended Q3 with $112.2 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. 

AEye’s revenue increased by 9% from the last quarter, and it saw a $4.6 million decrease in expenses from the prior quarter. The savings in expenses were due to lower accrued payroll, stock-based compensation costs and general and administrative costs. AEye hopes it can bring in $1 million in revenue in the fourth quarter. 

The company’s GAAP losses come out to a loss of about $.15 per share. AEye’s stock price losses were due to overall market sentiment, the company’s Chief Financial Officer Bob Brown said during its Q3 earnings call.

“We believe the impact we’re seeing on our stock price is predominantly related to overall market sentiment, rather than something company-specific,” Brown said during the call. “We’ve seen particularly negative sentiment around growth stocks given the dramatic rise in interest rates coupled with a potential recession looming. We’ll continue to focus on improving our shareholder value over time by controlling what we can which is executing well on our product development goals and on our business plan.”

Along with its latest earnings, the company announced it has broken ground on its high-volume manufacturing line at Sanmina’s future plant in Thailand, and that it’s launching its 4Sight line of products. 

“As planned, today we are excited to launch our 4Sight line of products which we believe to be built on the industry’s premier high-performance adaptive LiDAR platform. The reaction we are getting from users who require high-performance capabilities like autonomous hub-to-hub trucking, true high-speed highway autopilot, and other high-impact industrial, aerospace, and defense applications is incredibly encouraging. We believe the 4Sight platform is groundbreaking and will accelerate the adoption of LiDAR across diverse markets. The 4Sight platform differs from many other ‘point’ LiDAR solutions in that it is natively architected to integrate with other sensors and across networks to not only deliver optimal pre-perception data, but also help users customize how, when, and where they process critical information to make autonomous decisions,” Luis Dussan, founder and chief technology officer of AEye, said.

Earlier this month, two of the biggest LiDAR makers, Ouster and Velodyne, announced they’re merging in an all-stock transaction. The combined company plans to leverage the complementary customer base, partners and distribution channels to accelerate LiDAR adoption.

Kyle Vogt, co-founder and CEO of autonomous driving company Cruise, last year said the LiDAR industry would consolidate. The issue, according to Vogt, is the projected revenue comes from “entirely overlapping potential customers, with very little discount applied to future projections.”

Other LiDAR companies won’t be able to make the cut. In October, Ibeo Automotive Systems GmbH, a global provider of LiDAR sensors, filed for insolvency and was granted insolvency proceedings in self-administration.