AEye Inc (LIDR)

[WeTheMarket]

AEye Reports Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results
November 11 2021 - 04:05PM, Business Wire
https://ih.advfn.com/stock-market/NASDAQ/aeye-LIDR/stock-news/86533451/aeye-reports-third-quarter-2021-financial-results

AEye, Inc. (Nasdaq: LIDR), a global leader in adaptive, high-performance LiDAR solutions, today announced its third quarter 2021 financial results.

“AEye is experiencing positive customer and partnership momentum,” commented Blair LaCorte, CEO of AEye. “We believe this business traction is directly attributable to our decision to take the time to build an adaptive LiDAR platform, in contrast to how our peers approached the market. Our platform is unique as it can be licensed to ADAS customers, such as Continental, as well as sold directly into a variety of industrial and mobility markets in conjunction with our system integrator partners. AEye’s goal remains to leverage this unique adaptive architecture to deliver reliable, cost-effective, and high-performance products to accelerate the adoption of LiDAR.”

AEye management will hold a conference call today, November 11, 2021, at 3:00 p.m. Pacific time (6:00 p.m. Eastern time) to discuss these results. AEye’s CEO, Blair LaCorte, and CFO, Bob Brown, will host the call, followed by a question-and-answer session.

The webcast and accompanying slides will be accessible via the company’s website at https://investors.aeye.ai/.

Strategic Milestones for 2021

Financial
- AEye completed its public debut by listing on Nasdaq (LIDR), raising more than $200 million, net of fees, to fund product development, increase scale, and support AEye’s growing customer base.
Product
- AEye established new LiDAR industry performance standards for range, rate, and resolution in performance specification tests monitored, validated, and published by VSI Labs, one of the nation’s leading independent evaluators and advisors on active safety and automated vehicle technologies.
- AEye validated superior weather performance as documented in the journal, Atmosphere.

Manufacturing
- ADAS: AEye transitioned initial production of automotive B-samples of AEye-based long-range LiDAR sensors to a Continental manufacturing line. The Continental HRL131 is on-track for large-scale series production in 2024. The HRL 131 will be manufactured, sold, and supported, under Continental’s name to its installed base of 25 ADAS customers/OEMs.
- Industrial: AEye is on schedule to transition manufacturing of AEye’s 4Sight™ M sensor for industrial and mobility applications from AEye’s Advanced Development Center in Dublin, CA to Sanmina, AEye’s lead contract manufacturing partner, in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Customers and Partners
- Continental announced the integration of AEye’s LiDAR technology into their full-stack (cameras, radar, lidar, and ECU) automotive-grade system for Level 2+ automated and autonomous driving applications – allowing Continental to sell a standalone high-performance long-range LiDAR sensor or as part of a complete ADAS system.
- AEye announced a partnership with TuSimple to deploy AEye’s long-range, high-performance LiDAR for autonomous trucking applications.
AEye announced integration of its adaptive LiDAR with the Nvidia DRIVE Platform for autonomous vehicles.
- AEye launched its adaptive LiDAR solutions for Intelligent Transportation Systems at the ITS World Congress in Hamburg in October:
-- Partnered with Seoul Robotics, a global leader in perception software, to integrate AEye’s adaptive LiDAR with Seoul Robotics’ SENSR perception software to deliver a complete solution for long-range object detection, classification, and perception.
-- Collaborated with Intetra, a leading provider of end-to-end ITS solutions, to demonstrate how AEye’s software-definable LiDAR enables improved detection accuracy for automated tolling in all lighting, weather, and traffic conditions.
-- AEye is also working with ITS industry leaders such as Mitsubishi and Econolite.
- AEye, as previously announced, is working with leaders in other industrial markets such as Komatsu (Construction) and Hitachi (Rail).
Governance
- A new board of directors was elected, bringing to AEye extensive public governance, legal, and financial management experience as well as deep domain expertise in the automotive, trucking, aerospace, and defense markets.

Scaling the Company
- AEye opened offices in Japan and Korea and expanded our presence in Germany to support international growth.
- AEye increased key employee headcount primarily in engineering, operations, and sales and marketing to support product roll-out.
Innovation
- AEye filed its 100th patent for groundbreaking concepts that meaningfully strengthen AEye’s IP protection and competitive position.

Q3 2021 Financials
AEye reported revenue of $0.1 million, and a GAAP net loss of $(17.4) million, or $(0.15) per share based on 114.9 million weighted average shares outstanding. Adjusted EBITDA was $(12.5) million for the quarter.

The company closed the quarter with $182.4 million in cash and cash equivalents, and marketable securities and is debt-free.

Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP financial measure. Refer to “Non-GAAP Financial Measures” for a discussion of Adjusted EBITDA and the financial tables below for reconciliations of Adjusted EBITDA to GAAP net loss, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure.

Conference Call and Webcast Details
AEye management will hold a conference call today, November 11, 2021, at 3:00 p.m. Pacific time (6:00 p.m. Eastern time) to discuss these results. AEye’s CEO, Blair LaCorte, and CFO, Bob Brown, will host the call, followed by a question-and-answer session.

The webcast and accompanying slides will be accessible via the company’s website at https://investors.aeye.ai/.

About AEye
AEye is the premier provider of intelligent, next generation, adaptive LiDAR for vehicle autonomy, ADAS, and robotic vision applications. AEye’s Intelligent Detection and Ranging iDAR™ system and 4Sight™ products leverage biomimicry and principles from automated targeting applications used by the military to scan the environment, intelligently focusing on what matters most, enabling faster, more accurate, and more reliable perception. iDAR is the only software configurable LiDAR with integrated deterministic artificial intelligence, delivering industry-leading performance in range, resolution, and speed. The company was founded in 2013 and is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures
The non-GAAP measures provided in this press release should not be considered a substitute for, or superior to, measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in the United States. A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial data is included in the supplemental financial data attached to this press release. Non-GAAP financial measures do not have any standardized meaning and are therefore unlikely to be comparable to similarly titled measures presented by other companies. AEye considers these non-GAAP financial measures to be important because they provide additional insight into the Company’s on-going performance. The Company provides this information to investors for a more consistent basis of comparison and to help investors evaluate the results of the Company’s on-going operations, and to help enable more meaningful period-to-period comparison. Non-GAAP financial measures are presented only as supplemental information for purposes of understanding the Company’s operating results. The non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP.

This presentation includes non-GAAP financial measures, including Adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as GAAP net loss plus stock-based compensation, plus expenses related to the registration statement on Form S-1 on behalf of selling stockholders, plus change in fair value of embedded derivative and warrant liabilities, plus the gain on our PPP loan forgiveness, plus amortization and depreciation expense, plus interest expense, less interest income.