Ouster, Inc. (NYSE:OUST) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Angus Pacala: Thank you, Mark. Our business has tremendous revenue growth potential across all verticals. The use case for lidar continues to expand, and we believe that Ouster software products will accelerate adoption. As such, we aim to achieve an average annual revenue growth rate of 30% to 50% and see multiple opportunities to drive this growth. First, our strong bookings will serve as a tailwind as we enter 2024. For example, key customers in our mapping and automotive verticals have signed binding commitments tripled their purchases next year versus 2023 levels. These large multi-million dollar bookings will provide substantial momentum. Second, we are witnessing an expanding sales pipeline across multiple verticals as customer projects progress from a valuation to commercialization.

For example, we are engaged with leading OEMs in the forklift industry, which manufactures over 2 million units annually. We estimate a 1% penetration rate in this single sub vertical representing over $50 million of annual lidar hardware revenue opportunity with substantial upside from retrofitting the installed base. Similar size opportunities exist with other large end markets like autonomous mobile robots, earthmovers and agriculture. Our pipeline includes robust engagements with multiple customers. These demand plans grow from initial purchases in the dozens of units to hundreds or thousands of units over 12 to 24 months. Third, we are encouraged by positive industry growth trends, two leading lidar industry analysts, Yole and ABI forecast volumes for logistics, smart infrastructure and non-automotive ADAS applications to grow at a 40% plus CAGR from 2023 through 2026.

This broad adoption wave strongly supports our business. We firmly believe that the non-ADAS market opportunity is substantial and will not be a constraint on our long-term growth. Lastly, automotive ADAS is a major upside catalyst for our business. Our current operating model does not rely on an ADAS win to achieve success. We believe 2024 will represent the culmination of multiple years of developing the end-state architecture of automotive lidar with the fully solid-state DF series. We are confident in our ability to win high-volume series production programs based on the positive feedback from OEM and Tier 1 demos as we put increasingly mature DF hardware in their hands. So to recap, we are laser focused on three key areas to position Ouster for financial success as we proceed along our path to profitability.

Growing revenues by 30% to 50% annually, by expanding current customer commitments, penetrating new market opportunities and capitalizing on growing demand for lidar technology, expanding our gross margins to 35% to 40% through improving our operations structure and a more favorable product mix and maintaining operating expenses at or below third quarter 2023 levels to capitalize on our operating leverage. I’ll turn it back to Mark to provide our fourth quarter guidance.

Mark Weinswig: Thanks, Angus. Our third quarter performance saw a number of financial improvements over the second quarter, including higher revenues, higher gross margins, lower operating expenses and a significantly improved net loss and adjusted EBITDA. We have sequentially increased our reported gross margins and revenues each quarter since the merger and see strong demand going into the fourth quarter. For the fourth quarter of 2023, Ouster is targeting between $23 million and $25 million in revenue, we are pleased at our growth over the past several quarters, driven by the strong bookings activities and key design wins. We expect to see continued progression on our gross margins as we complete the integration activities, transfer manufacturing of the Velodyne sensors and benefit from a favorable product mix.

As we continue to make progress on these activities, we expect our GAAP results to further converge with non-GAAP results. And with that, I would like to turn the call back over to Angus for closing remarks.

Angus Pacala: Thanks, Mark. I’m extremely proud of our third quarter results, in addition to the massive effort by everyone at Ouster to support a successful integration following our merger with Velodyne in February. While we still have one more quarter to go, we have already made incredible progress against the goals we set earlier this year. We optimized our business operations, achieved significant cost savings, improved the unit economics of the Velodyne products through outsourcing, transition the manufacturing of our REV7 sensors, continued to execute on our OS and DF digital lidar road maps and unified and improved our software offerings to accelerate our solutions business. We did all of this while shipping more sensors, improving gross and recording growing quarterly revenues.