Ambarella, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMBA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jeremy Kwan: Great. Thank you. And I guess, a quick question on the OpEx. I understand some of that is CES for next year — or next — sorry, in January. I guess, excluding CES, what kind of run rate should we think about as we look to fiscal ’24? Thank you.

Brian White: Sure. We’re still bottoming out on our OpEx budget for next fiscal year. But I guess, the way I would think about it at this point is consider the exit velocity of our guidance for fiscal Q4, which at the midpoint was about $47.5 million. Going into next fiscal year, we’re going to have additional chips in development that would cause that number to increase. So, you’ve got two things to consider. Number one, OpEx has been increasing throughout fiscal ’23. And so, even if OpEx remained flat at the Q4 forecast level, it would be up on a year-over-year basis. And then, in addition to that, we’ll have some additional spending requirements. That’s about what I could give you at this point. In next quarter’s call, I think we can provide some more insight.

Operator: Next question I have is coming from Kevin Cassidy of Rosenblatt.

Kevin Cassidy: Congratulations on the Continental win. And on the Continental win, are there expectations for them to use the scalability of CV3? Will they have a low end solution and the high end, or maybe 3 different solutions?

Dr. Fermi Wang: Yes. First of all, thank you. And also, I believe your read is right. In fact, in their press release, they talk about one of the reasons they chose CV3 family is because they can use a software structure to apply it from low end to high end product line.

Kevin Cassidy: I see. And is the Oculii or no — Ambarella radar solution included in the overall design, or is it still to be determined?

Dr. Fermi Wang: In the press release, we didn’t talk about radar. So, I’ll keep that — we will give you more update when we have the right to talk about the potential radar collaborations.

Kevin Cassidy: Okay, great. Well, congratulations again.

Dr. Fermi Wang: Thank you.

Operator: Next question I have is coming from Tore Svanberg of Stifel.

Tore Svanberg: I had a follow-up question on the Continental win and, again, congratulations on that. If you could just expand a little bit on sort of the — how the sales strategy works there? Because obviously, you’re providing some functionalities but obviously, maybe some other companies will provide others. So, is this like a full reference platform that Continental is offering? If you could just add a little bit of context on how you go to market, specifically with all the parts that are part of that particular solution?

Dr. Fermi Wang: Yes. First of all, CV3 will be the domain controller for the system that we are talking to Conti about. And the goal is that there is no other major processing chips on that system. And — but the CV3 well take in multiple different sensor modality and perform not only just the perception, but also all the higher-level software functions that the software is provided by Conti.

Tore Svanberg: And a follow-up question on CV3. It sounds like you’re starting to — at least thinking about leveraging that platform into non-auto applications. I was just wondering, both from a sort of capacity and also from a timing perspective, when CV3 could start to venture into other non-auto applications. And I guess the reason I asked the question is because you obviously have a lot going on here in the auto space. So, I’m just wondering if you have enough resources to go after non-auto applications for CV3.

Dr. Fermi Wang: Right. So first of all, using CV3 in a robotic application is definitely a strategy that Ambarella is implementing. And like you said, we are a small company and we have limited resources. Therefore, we need to target and be focusing on strategic accounts. In auto, we have a few — obviously Conti is the first one, there are a few more. But in the robotics space, definitely, our strategy is to have a target customer which has already some products in the market and as well as they really need performance like CV3 family chips, doesn’t matter whether high end, low end. Because if you look at a lot of robots out there, they are — there have multiple processing silicon in that robot today. And definitely, they can use some kind of domain controller like CV3 to integrate those functions together and provide not only the better cost, but also better system design as well as efficiency. So I think that’s definitely a market we will continue to work on.

Louis Gerhardy: Yes, Tore, it’s Louis. I’ll just add. It’s a good question because global robotics applications are not part of our automotive funnel, so that is something that’s separate and not reflected in that funnel we’ve communicated.

Operator: The next question here is coming from Suji Desilva of Roth.