AEye (LIDR) investor relations material

Strategic pivots and product innovation

• Pivoted in early 2024 to focus on developing a leapfrog LiDAR product, Apollo, after separating from a previous partner and leveraging customer learnings for improved performance, cost, and size.

• Partnered with Lite On for cost-driven manufacturing, leveraging their expertise and supply chain to keep CapEx low and scale efficiently.

• Achieved first major OEM win in transportation and integrated Apollo LiDAR into NVIDIA DRIVE AGX, enhancing credibility and performance validation.

• Emphasized LiDAR's necessity over cameras in challenging conditions, with China leading in mass production and Western markets expected to ramp up in the next 12 months.

• Built a strong pipeline in adjacent markets like tolling and smart infrastructure, with rapid product-to-OEM win cycles enabled by software-defined architecture.

Financial discipline and business model

• Maintains a strong cash position with over $80M in the bank and the lowest burn rate in the industry, providing runway through 2028.

• Capital-light model supported by scalable software updates, allowing rapid adaptation to diverse customer needs with a small engineering team.

• Employs a methodical, three-phase customer evaluation process to ensure resource allocation aligns with financial returns, with regular deal desk reviews.

• Automotive margins are tighter, but non-automotive markets offer higher margins, with competitive pricing well below $1,000 for long-range LiDAR.

• Lite On partnership provides supply chain resiliency and expertise in automotive integration, supporting risk management as the company scales.

Market traction and customer engagement

• Six contracts secured with 30 more in deep negotiation, expecting revenue growth this year and thousands of units shipped next year.

• Recent OEM win driven by unmatched detection range, with immediate aftermarket deployment and revenue ramping into 2027.

• Advanced negotiations with a top-five automaker for a Level 3 passenger vehicle program, catalyzed by NVIDIA partnership and validation.

• Non-automotive market is large and less competitive, with most customers replacing legacy technology rather than switching from competitors.

• Focused on converting a robust pipeline of over 100 potential customer engagements into recurring revenue.