Mobileye Global Inc. (NASDAQ:MBLY) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mobileye Global Inc. (NASDAQ:MBLY) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript July 28, 2023

Operator: Greetings and welcome to the Mobileye Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is not my pleasure to introduce your host, Dan Galves, Chief Communications Officer. Please, you may begin.

Dan Galves: Hello, and welcome to Mobileye’s second quarter 2023 earnings conference call for the periods ending July 1, 2023. Please note that, today’s discussion contains forward-looking statements based on the business environment as we currently see it. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the accompanying press release, which includes additional information on the specific factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Additionally, on this call, we will refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP figures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures is provided in our posted earnings release. Joining us on the call today are Prof. Amnon Shashua, Mobileye’s CEO and President; and Moran Shemesh Rojansky, Mobileye’s Acting CFO. Thanks. And now I will turn the call over to Amnon.

Amnon Shashua: Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining our earnings call. On the revenue side, the quarter was in-line to better than our expectation. Customers were very cautious in the first half of 2023, which led to below normal growth but we have seen the production schedule solidify for the second half of the year, where we expect to grow 16% year-over-year on much higher volumes than the first half. Profitability was better-than-expected with adjusted operating margin of 31%, up four points versus Q1. At the midpoint of our updated guidance, adjusted operating margin for 2023 is 29.5%, nearly three points higher than our original guidance back in January. The good news on the cost side is a combination of macro factors, negotiation and customers on engineering, reimbursement, and results of a continual refinement of our spending plans in order to heighten efficiency and optimize returns.

Importantly, despite the lower base of operating expenses in 2023, we still see OpEx growth rates in future years moderating to more normal levels compared to 2022 and the 30% growth we originally planned for 2023. This should support good operating leverage over time. Turning to business development for our advanced product portfolio, we continue to move more and more OEMs towards the design win phase. We can now count nine large established OEM prospects and what we consider advanced stages for products like SuperVision and Chauffeur. In most cases, we are not competing against anyone. The process is about physical testing to convince the OEM of the performance and the design domain of the system, establishing what role the OEM will have in customizing the system and often negotiating the bundling of different products like SuperVision and Chauffeur across various brands, legal segments and launch date.

Beyond our history of execution and our ability to prove the capability in physical testing across long distances, multiple road types and conditions, what appeals to the OEM is that our product portfolio is scalable, cost efficient, engineering, design efficient, and are above all displaying, leading and cutting edge performance. In terms of scalability, the core technologies of computer vision and extremely efficient IQ processing platform boosted by remapping forms the baseline for solutions that are relevant across all vehicle price points and the wide range of feature sets from eyes on, hands on, all the way to eyes off, hands off, and drive off. Our work with Volkswagen Group is a good example. Since 2018, all new vehicles across the group have used Mobileye provided ADAS, and this relationship exists well into the 2030s.

Beginning in 2021 REM mapping functionality was added to the NED platform, leading to a relatively low cost way to provide class leading lane centering capability among many other functions, and providing an early opportunity for the OEM to generate recurring subscription revenue. The success of this product, which we call cloud enhanced ADAS led to a recent design link to Cascade REM across most of the entire group over time. Next, we have the SuperVision design win with Porsche. Porsche shares common platforms with other premium brands of the Volkswagen Group. While not formalized yet, we expect SuperVision to be adopted by the other premium brands to increase economies of scale. In fact, Audi and Bentley executives are already on record expressing excitement to bring SuperVision to their product.

An additional benefit of SuperVision to our OEM customers is that it creates a bridge to our consumer level eyes of the solution culture for. The surround computer vision, REM, and IQ based domain controller on SuperVision is also the baseline for Chauffeur. The difference in the systems is the additional secondary perception system made up of LiDARs and radar, which result in significant increase in the meantime between failure, which is obviously key to enabling eyes of. In other words, full driver disengagement under a broad set of conditions and road types. This also forms a baseline for our mobilize drive mobility as a service solution. On this front, there has been recent news on our delivery of multiple self-driving systems, which have been integrated into Volkswagen’s ID Buzz for testing by Volkswagen commercial vehicles in both the U.S. and Europe.

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The fact that Volkswagen has recently demonstrated these vehicles with analysts and media after only several months of us working together is a testament to how evolved this technology already is. The ability to provide efficient and high probability products across all vehicle price points for both consumer owned and mobility-as-a-service solutions all based on the same proven core technology is a huge selling point to OEM. As is the increased flexibility of our technology, we provide tools to OEMs to both secure the system and also develop and deploy their own software in order to differentiate and to enable true ownership of the systems. For example, with the Porsche SuperVision program, our software team is providing about 600 tuneable parameters that Porsche engineers can adjust to create a unique customer experience.

As an enabler for tuning, we have designed a formal high level tuning language which we call driving policy behavior shaping that allows one to describe the desired driving policy as this one write code on top of our driving policy operating system. Then we have EyeQ Kit on top of that to offer them bespoke software integration within the mobilize stack as well as the potential to deploy non mobilize functions such as automated parking or driving monitoring on the EyeQ, saving the cost of additional EyeQ. Final topic before turning it over to Moran is the continued rollout of the software to ZEEKR vehicles on the road. As you all know, the full SuperVision capability is being delivered to ZEEKR vehicles over time to over the air updates. Mapping is key to this.

The complexity of mapping in China means that data collection must be done through Chinese partners and as a result data collection started much later in China than North America and Europe. The map coverage in China is behind those other regions, but it is quickly built. All ZEEKR vehicles have had a very sophisticated highway assist system for many months now, but until recently the full point to point navigate on pilot functionality was only available to a fairly small number of beta users. We are very pleased that ZEEKR recently significantly broadened the number of users with Highway Navigate on Pilot and we expect a full rollout to all users within weeks. Initial feedback has been very good. ZEEKR system is performing much better than other NOT systems in terms of ability to complete maneuvers without takeover in many difficult situations like construction areas, highway margin and heavy traffic and performing lane changes within site curves.

Influencers and media have also heightened highlighted the strength of the system versus competitors focusing on the assertive human-like performance of the car. Several calling it the most efficient and capable navigate on pilot that ever experienced. Any negative feedback has been around some difficulty in the map, which will be rapidly built out over the following months. The eyes-on hands-free market is much more developed in China than other regions and it is a significant proof point to other OEM customers that ZEEKR’s system is outperforming. This supports the feedback we have gotten from other OEMs that have performed benchmark tests of their own in a test environment, but proof points from actual production vehicles driven by non-engineers is obviously much more powerful.

I now turn it over to Moran to go over the technical to go over the financial results and guidance in more detail.

Moran Shemesh Rojansky: Thank you, Amnon, and thanks for joining the call everyone. Before I begin, please be aware that all my comments on profitability will refer to non-GAAP measurements. The primary exclusion of in Mobileye non-GAAP numbers is a monetization of intangible assets, which is mainly related to indoor acquisition of Mobileye in 2017. We also exclude stock-based compensation. Starting with Q2, overall revenue was down about 1% year-over-year. This core EyeQ revenue also down 1% year-over-year and higher ASP did not fully offset a modest volume decline. We do believe the destocking of inventory at our Q1 customers impacted the growth rate in both Q1 and more sharply in Q2. Looking ahead to the second half, our guidance implies that we will be back to meaningfully outperforming industry production volumes.

SuperVision shipments were 10,000 units in the quarter. This was exactly as expected. As we noted on the April earnings call, Q1 shipments of 25,000 were significantly higher than end market volumes. The intent in Q2 was to fully reduce debt inventory build from Q1. The strong recovery in weaker end market volumes and our intentionally low shipments accomplished this goal. Gross margins were in-line with our expectations. On a sequential basis, EyeQ margin was stable. The approximate one point increase in Q2 as compared to Q1 was simply due to SuperVision revenue being a smaller mix of overall revenue. Operating expenses were lower than we expected, and this led to strong adjusted operating margin of 31%, up about four points versus Q1. The following three areas, accounting for the majority of the lower-than-expected cost in the quarter are; number one, on the payroll side, depreciation of the Israeli shekel led to payroll savings in U.S. dollar terms.

The FX rate was approximately 4% favorable to what we had forecast for the quarter. Number two, the move into our new Jerusalem campus was delayed from May until the fall of 2023. The higher facility expenses from the new campus will now begin later in the year than we expected. Number three, we also experienced lower costs for our efforts around mobility-as-a-service. We are constantly reviewing our activities to ensure that our product rollouts be as efficient as possible. In the case of mobility-as-a-service, we have the exercise plan to certify an EyeQ 5 based Neovasc fleet of vehicles for our customers in the near-term. The cost simply weren’t justified relative to the volume that were possible on the Neovasc platform. The benefits of the new Neovasc fleet, however, still exists in terms of continued testing and validation of the software.

In terms of scaling production volume from the Mobileye drive self driving system, our go-to-market strategy is focused on integration, of the system into purpose built vehicles from vehicle builders, including Scheffler, Holland and Volkswagen commercial vehicles. We expect these vehicle platforms to begin serial production in 2025, which also coincides with volume production of our EyeQ six base compute platform and our software defined imagining riders, each important for scaling the mobility-as-a-service business. In terms of cash flow, we continue to rebuild our strategic inventory of EyeQ chips, which have been largely consumed over the course of 2021 and 2022 during the supply chain crisis. Our ability to satisfy demand during recent years partially by consuming our inventory buffer was a big positive.

Rebuilding of the inventory is a very important activity, so that we will be prepared in case of any potential disruption in the future. Capital expenditure in the quarter were consistent with our view that CapEx should be roughly similar this year versus 2022. Turning to the guidance. Revenue is tracking in-line with our prior guidance, which we are reaffirming today, both for the core EyeQ business and SuperVision. On EyeQ, schedules have become more solid over the last couple of months, and customer requests to move volume around have largely seen. Customer orders support a steep ramp of expected volume in the second half, with Q3 up over 10% versus Q2 and Q4 up more than 20% versus Q3 levels. On SuperVision, weaker end market volumes recovered strongly in Q2, which both reduced the inventory built in Q1 and solidified the volume trajectory for the second half.

We continue to expect full-year shipment consistent with our prior guidance, Q4 will be higher than Q3. Given the new vehicle launches and the ZEEKR 001 entry into Europe. Gross margin for individual product lines are stable. We expect SuperVision revenue makes to be higher in Q3 and Q4 versus Q2, which will drive some reduction in overall growth margin versus Q3 level. On the adjusted operating income side, the positive updates to our guidance is related to lower than expected operating expenses. Year-over-year growth of OpEx is now expected to be around 22% to 23% versus our prior indication of 30% growth. Nearly half of the reduction already occurred in Q2. The rest of the reduction is primarily coming from the following two areas. Number one, to varying degrees.

The areas of lower cost in Q2 like payroll facilities and mobility as a service are generating some saving in the second half of the year as well. Number two, non-recurring engineering reimbursements in the second half of the year are now expected to be higher than we had originally forecasted. In terms of tax rate, we continue to expect an effective tax rate in between the 12% and 13% range for the year. Before we start the Q&A session, I would like to thank Anat Heller for being an amazing mentor to me and for her continued support as an advisor to the finance team and management. I would also like to thank our entire finance team for the professional and tirelessly work since we have become a public company. Thank you. And we will now take your questions.

Dan Galves: So we are ready to start the Q&A session.

Operator: We will now conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

Dan Galves: Thanks everybody. It is Dan and just in the interest of time, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up please. Thank you.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. And our first question comes from Aaron Rakers with Wells Fargo.

Aaron Rakers: I do have one question and one quick follow-up. So, I think in the prepared remarks you had started with a comment that you now have nine estimated OEMs engaged in terms of Chauffeur and SuperVision. I think last quarter you talked about having six large OEMs kind of deployed looking out in the 2024 timeframe. So I’m just curious, can you walk us through how is that a change, how things have changed in terms of your pipeline of design wins on SuperVision?

Amnon Shashua: We noted in the press release that our serious engagements on SuperVision and Chauffeur have expanded versus the beginning of the year in terms of the number of OEMs. Now, I’m defining serious engagement as where OEM engineers are fully aligned with Mobileye that Mobileye the right path forward in terms of technology, performance and cost, where we already are in production executing an official product program or in a funded physical concept phase. Currently this list of OEMs represents about 30% of global volume. This is very encouraging because the vast majority of the rest of the industry remains very open to us. So for these OEM engagements we are not competing with another company or technology, but there are other complexities in the decision making process that have nothing to do with competitive landscape.

Things like go-to-market and consumer pricing strategies, how to best align the product into the portfolio launch plan, defining roles within the program, what to do with the internal development assets. So real level two plus what we call eyes on hands off, and the path to eyes off as well is a new potentially gigantic automotive term. With strategic implications and complexities that make the decision making process more complex than a simple ADAS care program. So working in our favor is increased in competitive pressure as Tesla and the China startups, including ZEEKR, pushed the envelope on hands-free technology. We have noted an increase in seriousness within the OEMs over the past one, two years, and have seen some OEMs that appear to be far away from us on advanced technology move rapidly to align behind our approach.

This is all very positive for us as a technology and then cost leader. We still see high likelihood of significant design wins announcements in the second half.

Aaron Rakers: That is very helpful and very interesting. And then I guess on the other front, I’m just curious as we think about ZEEKR 001, 009, you’ve got pollster four, I guess it sounds like the inventory dynamic and the issues that ZEEKR has kind of normalize himself out. So, as we look forward, I guess I’m trying to understand is, what are you embedding as far as the ZEEKR volumes for the full-year? Reiterating the full-year guide, or what I’m trying to gauge is how do we think about the potential upside if these volumes continue to improve? Just, updated views on just ZEEKR and what you’ve seen as a setup into the back half of the year?

Amnon Shashua: I think 2023 is very solid in terms of our corrected guidance that we did the last quarter. Regarding 2024, look, we provided a long-term outlook for SuperVision volumes at CES early January. And we will make annual updates, but we are not going to update this on an ad hoc basis. But in order to provide some more color everything is on track with new SuperVision customers, that we talked about in general. We closed the Porsche design win and the expansion of the SuperVision platform to other Volkswagen group brands. And that is proceeding as planned. The pipeline of OEMs is advanced. The discussion of SuperVision, it has grown versus where it was in January. And in terms of 2024, the number of vehicle models with SuperVision systems, that has not changed.