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Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Good morning. This is Rob Moffatt, Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at Innoviz, and I want to welcome you to our earnings conference call.Joining us today are Omer Keilaf, Chief Executive Officer; and Eldar Cegla, Chief Financial Officer. Following their opening remarks, we will open the call to your questions. I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded and will be available on the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.innoviz.tech.Before we begin, I would like to remind you that our discussion today will include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to future events and the future financial performance of Innoviz.Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements made today speak only to our expectations as of today, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise them.For discussion of some important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements, please see the Risk Factors section of our Form 20-F filed with the SEC on March 9, 2023. I will now turn the call over to Omer. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We have a lot to talk about today. Q4 was a record quarter for us. There has been some important customer progress since CES and since the quarter has ended.The first thing I want to highlight is the amazing revenue performance. Full year revenues of nearly $21 million were up 246% year-over-year. And even with raising guidance midyear, we came in above the high end of the guidance range.In addition to that, we delivered Q4 2023 revenues of nearly $15 million, an increase of nearly 850% year-over-year and also above the high end of our quarterly guidance range. The strong revenue performance came from a combination of production revenues, robust sample shipments and NREs and it validates our three-pronged approach to growing future revenue streams.We also saw positive customer developments in the quarter with BMW and Volkswagen and built a new shared program with Mobileye as a platform partner and us view the strategic realignment to maintain our cost discipline and extend our cash runway as we position the business for rapid transformational growth.The combination of strong revenues and disciplined cost management, led to an impressive cash performance with our quarterly cash burn at just $14.5 million, a record low since Innoviz became a public company, which allowed us to finish the year with approximately $150 million in cash and equivalents, leaving us with a strong runway that we expect to last through the market share capture window. I'll go through each one of these topics now.Let's start with the news we shared today on BMW. In this morning's earnings press release, we disclosed that we are working on a second vehicle geography for the InnovizOne deployment.When we first announced the production award several years ago, we said that the InnovizOne was tested and certified on 3 vehicles: the 7 Series, the 5 Series and the IX. But to date, we've only been able to share details on the 7 series, which is now on sale in Germany with deliveries scheduled to begin in the upcoming weeks in March of 2024.Today's news is that, we are working on an InnovizOne deployment on the BMW 5 Series in China, a very important geography. BMW recently received an approval to begin level spree testing in China, and we are working closely with the teams performing on-road testing and software development specific to the Chinese market. If all goes well, we could see the technology deployed on the locally built 5 Series.It is still early to share a lot of details at this point, but we expect that we'll have more to say in the coming quarters. Moving on to Volkswagen. At CES, we unveiled the ID. Buzz light commercial vehicle program as our second program with the Volkswagen group. This represents an important development for 3 reasons.First, it shows our strength of our relationship with Volkswagen. Our progress towards SOP with our first program is tracking well, and they have confidence in our ability to bring a second program to the market within the same time frame.Second, the volumes from these programs are incremental to the award that we announced in 2022, supporting additional revenue growth and accelerating our best towards breakeven.And lastly, it deepens our relationship with Mobileye, who is working as an autonomy platform partner for the BMW Group. The ID Buzz is a light commercial vehicle and at the mobility market. It will be a Level 4 program with multiple IDs per vehicle.A test for vehicles is being deployed in Austin, Texas and Munich, Germany, and we expect the program to become increasingly visible to the public as we go through 2024, and the test place grows as it progresses towards a planned 2026, commercial launch. Additionally, development with our first Volkswagen work is progressing nicely. I flew to Germany, to deliver the first stages of our Innoviz B sample with our second-generation ASIC, custom ASIC and our partners at BW couldn't be happier.We are gearing up for advanced Witten testing in Germany and Sweden, and we will remain focused on the B-sample space in 2024 before moving to the C sample and D sample phase in 2025 as we progress those SOP later in the year.All in, I am very excited with the progress we are making with this important customer. Throughout 2023, we said we believe there are additional opportunities for us at Volkswagen beyond the serious production award was secured in '22.And with the ID Buzz announcement at CES, we delivered on that promise, but we're not stopping there. We are actively working on an additional 1 to 2 programs within the Volkswagen group, encompassing multiple brands, multiple platforms and multiple vehicles.It's too early to share any further details than that, but we hope to be able to disclose more as we go through 2024. Volkswagen is the world's second largest automotive OEM, capable of producing over 10 million vehicles per year.We believe that there is a long runway for growth with them. We also see a long runway for growth with Mobileye as an autonomy platform partner. As you've heard us talk about before, there are 3 leading autonomous driving platforms in the automotive industry from Mobileye, Qualcomm and NVIDIA.These partners operate the compute-hardware and software that integrates the sensing and perception inputs from the various ADAS components such as LiDAR, radar and cameras and play an important role in the sensor fusion and driving decision layers of software. We currently have serious production awards with 2 of these players, Mobileye and Qualcomm, and we are working on several NVIDIA programs in our RFI and RFQ pipeline for the eperio platform.Per Innoviz integrating with these platforms establishes a meaningful competitive advantage that can reduce friction in the lighter selection process and increase our odds of winning additional business from OEMs.Being already integrated with the major compute platforms on existing programs can significantly reduce the time, cost and risk that it takes for additional automakers to deploy the same system. We are essentially becoming an off-the-shelf solution, make it increasingly easy for OEMs, additional OEMs to choose Innoviz as their lidosupply.This is better enhanced by the work that we are doing ahead of our Volkswagen-SOP. In order to be ready to launch on time, we are planning our InnovizTwo production capacity to be prepared to ship by late 2025.There are many OEMs targeting launches in 2026, '27 and '28. And the fastest, less expensive and lowest risk way to prepare for this is with an autonomy platform partner like Mobileye, Qualcomm or NVIDIA and with a lighter supplier that has already proven they can deliver on SOP milestones and with the technological capabilities, price point and SOP time line of the InnovizTwo. Next, I will provide some thoughts on the global regulatory environment and discuss some important updates both on globally and in China and how we see these developments shaping the lighter industry.As many of you know, the United States Department of Defense, continues to be very active in terms of identifying companies that may have ties to the Chinese military. To the extent that the DoD places specific later companies on its 1260 age list, it could make it more difficult for these companies to win business with global OEMs that sell into the U.S. market.Conversely, if similar actions were to be replicated within the Chinese regulatory environment, it could make it difficult for the U.S. LiDAR companies to be deployed on the vehicles and the domestic Chinese market. This is where Innoviz has another competitive advantage.As an Israeli company, we are not caught up in the politics on either side of this debate. I'd like to say that Innoviz, is the Switzerland of LiDARs. We are neutral and can serve customers globally.We have plans to operate in China with both BMW and Volkswagen reactively quoting multiple RFIs and RFQs with global OEMs that plan to sell into the U.S. and the Chinese market with the same technology stack.The cost of bringing a Level 3 or Level 4 program to the market is substantial, and it will be extremely expensive for OEMs to run duplicative TeX tax in different markets with different LiDAR's vendors. They need to absorb those costs across as many units as possible with the global Ad platform. And with that, let's segue into what I think is some very positive news out of China. In addition to BMW, multiple other OEMs have received permits to begin level 3 testing in China in late 2023. To date, China has been a Level 2 market. What we are seeing on the ground is a rapid pivot towards accelerating to the development of Level 3 autonomy.The Chinese automotive market moves very fast as does the technology. If regulators there decided to embrace Level 3 autonomy, it can be done in a very short order. And similar to the prior topic, this could have implications globally.Chinese OEMs have proven themselves as very competitive manufacturers of highly capable because at affordable prices, particularly when it comes to EVs, and while Chinese exports haven't found their way to the U.S. market, they are starting to have an early impact in some parts of Europe and the rest of the world.This is a topic that OEMs are paying close attention to. If China rapidly pivot towards embracing Level 3 autonomy in the same way that it rapidly pivoted towards embracing EV technology, this could add another layer to the global competitive environment.At the a level, we foresee Western OEMs accelerating their Level 3 autonomous platform time lines in order to get ahead of incremental competitive spreads from Chinese OEMs. This has the potential to accelerate Label time lines globally that could create a level 3 called, rush. Next, I want to talk a little bit about the strategic realignment we announced at the end of January. As we have talked about in the past, we've both the InnovizOne and InnovizTwo programs in the development stages we have been running 2 parallel cost structures. But as the InnovizOne sensor and perception software shifted into series production late last year, much of that development work was completed.With InnovizOne workstream winding down, we initially reallocated headcount towards development projects like the LiDAR-based minimum risk Hanover or MRM software and the Innoviz core AI compute model.In discussing these technologies with new customers, it became clear that most OEMs are hyper-focused on more mature solutions like the InnovizTwo sensor and perception software and bringing those technologies to the market as soon as possible before focusing on other products.With that in mind, we made a decision to concentrate the majority of our go-forward investment on the InnovizTwo sensor and perception software platform and bringing that to the market with a rich FI and RFQ pipeline that we already have.We allocated as much of our staff as possible to InnovizTwo focused projects, by the transition offer an opportunity to trim some planned expenses to help reduce our burn and extend our cash runway.As a result of these changes, roughly 13% of the company headcount was reduced, along with some relaxed related OpEx and CapEx. The cost actions are expected to be fully completed by the end of the first quarter and are expected to reduce our planned cash outlays by $22 million to $24 million on an annualized basis.We also use the precision as an opportunity to integrate our hardware and software development departments into one unified R&D unit, which had been running separately. The new combined group will be led by [Avishay Moscovici], who has served as our Head of Software, reporting to me for the past several years.As part of that transition, Oren Buskila, our current Chief R&D, will be moving on to pursuing a new opportunity outside the other industry. We thank him for his many years of service and wish him the best of luck. Avishay has already begun its work on integrating the 2 departments and reorganizing the work streams in a more efficient way that allows for faster product development and simplified customer planning across both hardware and software.This is not just a reorganization of a few teams. It's about entirely different workflows and processes aimed at positioning the company for rapid transformative growth across multiple customers. It's an important reset of our organizational structure that will allow us to serve a much larger number of clients in the coming years. One example of how we are focusing our go-forward investment on the InnovizTwo sensor and software platform, includes a new slim design subvariant the team developed. We have a customer in the pipeline that is focused on going to the market with behind the rental liver solution.It would sit in the area around the rearview mirror, a deployment like this requires a very slow profile as there are already other sensors and technology in the same part of the car and because it's easier to integrate it into the windshield due to the curve of the glass.The customer is a top 10 global automaker with potential of meaningful later volumes. So, the team were at how to develop a hardware solution that could meet their strict physical requirements without sacrificing performance or requiring a meaningful reengineering of the interior components.This part was critical from our perspective as we want to share as much of the engineering across customers as possible to reduce bespoke hardware work, driving volume-based costs lower and incremental margins higher.It took some time to solve for, but ultimately, there were several creative solutions that overcame the challenges. In the end, it resulted in a new exterior design that reduced the high to the sensor from 45 millimeter to potentially a small 25-millimeter.The customer was impressed with our solution, and we have continued to move forward in the bidding process. And this work isn't specified to just one customer. We think it can be broadly relevant to future program interested in behind the wind-chill or slimmer roofline deployments where the new profile could be appropriate.This is just one example of our concentrating our time, focus on investment in leveraging the strength of the InnovizTwo platform can result in solutions with a broad market fit and earlier potential payoff and likely higher overall return on investment.And with that, I will turn the call over to Eldar to review our Q4 2023 and '23 financials.
Thank you, Omer, and good morning, everyone. Starting with cash. We ended Q4 2023 with approximately $150 million in cash, bank deposits, marketable securities and short-term restricted cash on the balance sheet.The combination of strong revenues, coupled with disciplined cost management led to the lowest quarterly cash burn in our history since becoming a public company. Cash used in operations and capital expenditures came in at roughly $14.5 million, which compares to prior trends in the $27 million to $29 million range.Needless to say, we were excited with this outcome, and it demonstrates the impact that growing revenues, coupled with cost management can have on the trajectory of cash line.Looking to the income statement. Revenues in Q4 2023 came in at $14.9 million compared to Q3 2023 revenues of $3.5 million delivering a 328% quarter-over-quarter increase. On a year-over-year basis, it compared to Q4 2022 revenues of $1.6 million, delivering a growth of nearly 850% year-over-year. This led to a full year 2023 revenue of $20.9 million, well ahead of the high end of our guidance range, coming in at a very strong 245% year-over-year growth in revenues.On the cost side, operating expenses for Q4 2023 were $29.5 million, a decrease of 12% from $33.5 million in Q4 2022. And on a full year basis, 2023 operating expenses of $121 million, came in roughly $4 million lower than the full year of 2022 for a 3% decline. This quarter's operating expenses included $5.5 million of share-based compensation compared to $5.3 million in Q4,2022.Research and development expenses for Q4 2023, were $22.1 million, a decrease from $26.2 million in Q4 2022. The quarter's R&D expenses included $3.6 million attributable to share-based compensation compared to $3.4 million in Q4, 2022. In conclusion, the financial performance in the fourth quarter and the full year of 2023 was stellar. We exceeded our revenue target all while controlling our cost and executing on critical milestones like the BMW SLP. And it led to a fourth quarter cash burn that was our lowest in history since becoming a public company.Going forward, the strategic realignment shows a continued focus on a disciplined management of cost, which, when coupled with continued revenue growth as a potential to extend our cash runway through the remainder of the market share capture window. And with that, I will turn the call back to Omer.
Thank you, Eldar. Looking back at 2023, I'm proud to say that we have delivered on many accomplishments. Our most meaningful progress was on the existing customer side.With BMW, we successfully managed to transition into full series production on the i7 with the InnovizOne, making us the only other pure-play company with a Level 3 passenger car on the road. And for the InnovizTwo, we initiated December work we announced in August, which we expect to be a foundation for an expansion of additional development work packages.On the Volkswagen side, we disclosed a second program with the ID Buzz, and we made meaningful progress on securing 1 to 2 additional programs that we think we can get over the finish line in 2024.As a reminder, the ID Buzz is incremental to the Volkswagen award that we announced in 2022. And the additional 1 to 2 programs that we hope to convert soon, could be meaningfully incremental through our existing Volkswagen volumes.Growing our contracted production volumes is our #1 goal. We are indifferent where the volumes come from, whether it's from an existing customer or a new customer. Each brings its own benefits, additional volumes and NRE service revenues with an existing customer can require less incremental work and relationship management, along with other synergies resulting in a stronger margin profile over time.And volumes with new customers, can offer entry points for new growth in additional vehicles and platforms down the road in addition to locking up incremental market share. Volume from either source helps absorb our fixed cost and bring us closer to being breakeven and ultimately free cash flow positive.2023 was very productive in terms of growing our relationships with new customers. And while we made meaningful progress, particularly on the RF side of our pipeline, we didn't reach sign series production awards with new customers before the end of 2023, though we hope to convert them in 2024.Out of the 10 to 15 programs in the pipeline and the roughly half that are in the more advanced RFQ stage, we had 3 programs, in particular, with new customers that were further along than others and more planned to make a decision by year-end.Two of the programs are for global deployment of levels pre vehicles. Those programs decision timing has been pushed into 2024, and we remain very active on the programs in advanced RFQ process that we believe includes only a few final players.We remain confident that we have a strong position in these RFQs and that we have good ads of converting them into our production poll.One of the 3 programs, was targeting a global deployment of LiDAR-enabled level 2 vehicles. Very late in the year, the customer pivoted this program to be a China-only vehicle and is now exploring a separate global Level 3 program for a different vehicle at a different date.We were not the natural choice for a China-only basic Level 2 deployment, and the award went to a local Chinese player. But through the process, we have built a solid relationship with the customer, and they appreciate and respect our technology. And we are expecting the RFI process for the new global levels pre vehicles in the coming months.While the revised China-only RFQ has moved out of the pipeline, we had 2 new RFIs from major global OEMs come in, resulting in a net positive gain of one program and leaving the pipeline still in the range of 10 to 15 programs, with roughly half still in the RFQ forces.As for the NRE booking, while we were able to secure only roughly $12 million of new bookings, having the new customer program decision move into 2024, very difficult for us to hit our 23 target. But similar to our new customer targets, we simply view these metrics as pushed out. We enrolled this target over into 2024 outlook, where we are confident that we can meet an ideal exceeded.There are many deals on the table, and we believe that we are in a strong position to bring it at least several of them over the finish line. For the cash collection targets, 2 of the payments planned for December '23 for work completed in '23, came in a few weeks later arriving in early '24. These late payments would have pushed us towards the midpoint of the guidance range. On the revenue side, '23 was very strong. Full year revenues of nearly $21 million were up 246% year-over-year. And even with raising guidance midyear, we came in above the high end of the guidance range.We accomplished that through a combination of production revenues, sample shipments and NRE service revenues. And while customer decision time lines, which are outside of our control, didn't conclude before year-end, I feel like the outperformance on the revenue line is a proof point of our desire to build a longer-term track record of under promising and over delivering.Based on the conversations we are having with customers, OEMs are still very much focused on making autonomy a reality. In fact, we are seeing a shift in OEMs priority away from electrification and to autonomy.OEMs know that consumers are increasingly buying cars based on technology, not horsepower and market share trends will be awarded to those that are on the cutting edge. With the EV evolution tolling, OEMs are eager to pivot to the next big mega trend. And there appears to be a growing consensus that it will evolve around Level 2+ and Level 3 autonomy.On the competitive side, we are seeing other LiDAR players struggling with their technology and SOP time lines. Meanwhile, their customers see the progress that are occurring with Innoviz at BMW and Volkswagen.As a reminder, the ID Buzz was a competitive conquest win. Looking forward to 2024, and beyond, we believe there could be additional opportunities for Conquest. For 2024, we are simplifying our guidance structure to 3 metrics. Since much of the activity that we're expected to conclude in late 2023 is still ongoing and very active, we're essentially rolling over those targets into '24.If the scope of activity that we think is possible plays out, we are confident that they will prove conservative, and we could have the ability to raise them during the year as we did with revenues during 2023. On the customer front, we expect 2 to 3 additional programs from both existing and new customers. On the NRE service revenue side, we expect that will translate into $20 million to $17million of new NRE bookings in 2024.For revenue, we are going to revert to quarterly guidance. Last year, was the first year we gave annual guidance, and it was a little premature for where our business is. There are many factors that can influence full year numbers, including lumpy NRE income that may be recognized as either revenue or a contra expense to R&D depending on the accounting treatment, which is difficult to know in advance at the beginning of the year.It is also difficult to know in advance what take rates on the i7 in Germany might look like and the timing for adding additional because or additional geographies such as the 5 Series in China to the InnovizOne deployment.We saw how this play are played out in 2023. We initially set the bar too low at $12 million to $15 million, then we raised it to $15 million to $20 million, and even that proved conservative by year-end. We don't want to set the bar too high, but we don't want to set it too low.And we feel like quarterly guidance will ultimately be more prudent and accurate way to approach revenue targets at this point. With this in mind, we are targeting first quarter of '24 revenue of $5 million to $6 million, which would be up roughly 400% to 500% year-over-year.Similar to 2023, we expect revenues to be more back half weighted based on seasonality, channel-fill customer activity. All in all, we are off to another exciting year in 2024. We are extremely busy pursuing additional programs with both new and existing customers. And we know that we have a lot to deliver on.We are also ramping up our work towards the InnovizTwo SOP, which is right around the corner. We have already dipped into the first quarter of '24. And to be ready for 2026 shipments, we are preparing the InnovizTwo product road map and production capacity to be ready for rate 2025. This will be here sooner than you expect.This is obviously important for our existing customers, but it also gives us a critical competitive advantage that is becoming a point of increasing focus in our conversations with new customers.Even though OEM's decisions are moving slower than planned, their SOP time lines mostly haven't changed. We have multiple RFQs that are still working towards 2026 and 2027 SOP targets. And for those OEMs engaging with LiDAR supplier, where the wheels are already in motion to be ready for production in late 2025 is a significant advantage. We also have the benefit of our contract manufacturing strategy. This allows us to be instantly flexible if additional awards come in.We can rapidly ramp up new lines at our manufacturing partner in any region of the world that the customer would want us to produce without the destruction, delay or capital requirements of building our own factories, the capital needs would be minimal and the peri sit which we could deploy capacity would be substantial.We are in a great position heading into 2024, and I'm confident that we will have a lot more to talk about in the coming quarters.With that, operator, please turn it over to Q&A, please.
[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from the line of Mark Delaney from Goldman Sachs.
I was just hoping you could comment on how the forward-looking order book has evolved, which at one point, I think was estimated to be north of $6 billion. And to what extent the order book and future revenue pipeline is being impacted by slower projected customer sales of EVs using your LiDAR?
Sure. We didn't update the order book, having that the main change in the order book comes from the addition of the ID Buzz. As we said in the past, we would not make updates to the order book based on a single customer in order to not reflect the program size in respect to our customer confidentiality.So, we will make updates once we bring more programs and then we can communicate them.
I guess, though, if you could talk more around how you see revenue progressing over the next 2 to 3 years given some of the changes in your projected EV sales from some of the models that may be using your LiDAR. Have you seen any shifts in customer plans around volumes that you can share even if on a qualitative basis?
Sure. I mean, I would say that we were not getting any feedback from customers concerning their slowdown of EV or no TV. The LiDAR platform is not correlated specifically to EVs that can operate on combustion engines just as well. So, so far, we didn't get any communication around the EV slowdown related to the volumes that they expect.
One last one for me, if I could, please. I realize you're not guiding 2024 revenue, but I'm hoping to better understand how you're thinking about the shape of the year. Would you anticipate first quarter revenue to be the low point of the year given what you know about customer schedules and NRE opportunities? Or is there any other qualitative color on the ship of the year that you may be able to share?
Yes. So, specifically, as we said on the earnings call previously, we are expecting that the second half will be more meaningful, but we don't give any specific for each quarter since it is very lumpy because the structure of the revenues that we are expecting.
Our next question comes from the line of Andres Sheppard from Cantor.
Congratulations on the quarter. Maybe to follow up on that last question, specifically regarding the $20 million to $70 million in new NRE bookings that you're targeting for 2024, I'm wondering if you have a sense as to when the majority of this will be recognized? Is this a Q4, Q3 story? Or is this something that maybe will be expected gradually throughout the year? And if you have a sense of whether some of it or most of it will likely be recognized as revenue versus a contract expense?
Yes. So, the NRE booking will be recognized over the lifetime of the program up to SOP which means basically whatever we book this year, it will probably be recognized over a few couple of years, maybe 2 to 4 years until the SOP. And as we mentioned before, it's difficult to say how you recognize it and what point of time. And if it will be recognized as revenue or rather contrary to the expense side.
I mean when we talk with customers, we try to draft the agreement in a way that we can recognize it as revenues. Maybe you can give examples on ways on kind of?
Yes. I don't want to go into the accounting side. But usually, you look at a specific contract, if it's specific to a customer or it's more generic. And then based on that, you are able to recognize it accordingly.
And maybe as a follow-up, I'm wondering if you could maybe give us some direction on your path to breakeven gross margins. I know you're not guiding gross margins, but do you anticipate this could potentially be a '20 to '24 time frame? Or are we looking more into perhaps next year and onwards?
So, I think you need to look at the trend that we have shown over the past year in 2023. So, Q1 was roughly almost 400 negative margins. And then Q4 was negative 15% margin. So, I think you see a nice trend here.We are hoping that the trend will continue. I don't want to say when we expect to be positive, but we are expecting or we are hoping that this trend will continue and at least we will be flat this year.
And maybe one last one, if I could. Just in regards to your liquidity, so you have now roughly $150 million. Just curious as to how you're thinking about future capital-raising opportunities. What is the run rate with the current liquidity on hand?
So, I think that in terms of liquidity, we were able to end the year with $150 million. We started the year with $186 million. And so, we were able to put some additional cash on our balance sheet.On the last quarter, we were able, as we said, to start collecting NRE, which we said will balance off significantly our expense. So, as we win more programs, we will be able to continue to balance off our expense side, and our goal is to be viable all through the window of opportunity that we are seeing in front of us, the capture and each program that we win extends our runway with additional NREs.
What I can add maybe to this. So, we're seeing in front of us several big opportunities that we are working on for quite a long time, and that can unlock opportunities for us for, I would say, for the next 2 years.We've been spending a lot of effort and time in trying to bring those opportunities and unlock them. And I believe that Innoviz is positioned very strongly to make that a reality. And I feel that if we will continue to be successful as we were, in the last 2 years, I believe that our technology is currently leading the pack in many ways.We believe that our experience, our customer base is giving us many advantages. I think some of the dynamics in the geopolitics, et cetera, gives us a big step-up right now. So, I feel that there are several opportunities in front of us that could be very meaningful. I'm positive that we'll be able to reach there.
Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Cassidy from Rosenblat Securities.
Congratulations on the progress. Just on the RFI and RFQ process, you mentioned there are delays. Can you go into more details on what the delays are? Is it the additional competition or OEMs? Just more cautious or technical obstacles, maybe just give some details on that.
So, it depends on the OEM. There are several discussions with one customer related to their desire to, I would say, continued discussions on some interface cybersecurity. I mean that's specifically what we're doing, having that they wanted to check if we can support a different kind of interface.Sounds very technical, but eventually, this requires a strong integration between us and the compute platform they are using and it requires, I would say, a good alignment before they can feel comfortable with the nomination based on this architecture.So, there's several technical discussions on this. And you need to understand that once you kick off the project, the customer needs to feel very confident that nothing changes. If for any reason they learn, they need to change something in the product on either side, whether it's the LiDAR or the compute platform. I would say, it's a very expensive decision to make, and therefore, they are cautious on how freezing the design and kicking off. That's one.Another OEM, I think it's mostly related to their internal kind of change of teams. They added a new team coming from another activity, they stopped working on and that team had to be integrated into the team, which kind of slowed down things towards the end of the year. But I can say that the progress in the last few weeks was very on steroids, I would say. So, I think that we're catching up deaveraging.
Maybe, you touched on something there about the platforms. And I wanted to ask about that. You had mentioned on the Qualcomm and a Mobileye platform, and that's great news. But is the decision still, I guess they're not packaged together, it's still the OEM can decide one platform with Qualcomm and then even choose competitors, LiDAR?
Yes, definitely. I mean eventually, it's the OEM decision on which LiDAR to use. But I would say the following: Eventually, when they make those decisions, there are many different metrics they look at before making that decision. And one of them is risk related to doing something that someone else didn't do.The second is cost. I mean, obviously, when someone would ask Qualcomm or Mobileye to start developing their platform based on another line, that would be a very expensive effort. And I'm sure they will not just carry the cost themselves. They will just throw that back in to the OEM.And I think that from a cost perspective, I don't think there is a lot of motivation for anyone to do that. But it's never the decision of the platform player, but they have ways to, I would say, give the motivation to the OEM not to add too much effort when it's not needed.
Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Garrigan from WestPark Capital.
Let me echo back congrats on the progress. Can you talk a little bit more about your contract manufacturing strategy? Just remind us how many manufacturing partners you have, what have you learned working with them? And any thoughts on eventually building kind of your own manufacturing facility? Or do you feel contract manufacturers are kind of the best strategy?
So, it always depends on the return on investment that you're making compared to the market volume. I mean, eventually, right now, we are trying to be elastic in terms of supporting different OEMs and different locations, we don't want to be committed to one geography while we are trying to scale.Our ability to work with contract manufacturers is one of our strengths today because we have access to different facilities that we don't need to make investment in ramping them up.Another part, which I think it's important, when you go through an audit with an OEM, and this primarily for the top 10 OEMs that set quality stands are the highest. When you are audited for a program, they cannot audit, they cannot nominate you based on a facility does not exist.When you're certified as a Tier 1 to an OEM, it's and nominated for Sears production, the teams need to be in the facility and audit it and make sure that the activity and the operation is meeting the standard. You cannot be nominated based on the future to be facility that one day will meet their requirements.We did not have any alternative other than work with contract manufacturers because, for example, when we were audited by Audi at the time, they wanted to be in the facility that eventually were served in a month to make sure and we provided them 5 options of different contra-manufacturers. They had preference to one specific because of their previous engagement, audited it and successfully managed to grow through.Now, that specific contributive factor has different facilities in different areas around the world, and that gives us that flexibility. I believe that once the program volumes would reach several millions a year production, this will start to make sense for in to make those investments. But I think at this point of time, it makes more sense. And I think it's part of our advantages.
My second question, just with BMW getting ready for deliveries, can you just talk about how unit projections changed from when you originally win the contract when you're about a quarter out or so from kind of start of production? I mean I'm assuming, you kind of get more color on the units, but do you kind of go from yearly projections to the OEM giving you weekly or quarterly estimates? Or are they kind of stick with kind of the yearly projections?
So, I mean, eventually, BMW is launching for the first time, their Level 3 program. As expected, that would be a soft launch kind of filling the water.There are plans to launch additional vehicles. As I mentioned, one of them is also in China. But I cannot say right now the volumes. I mean, I believe that with over the course of the following quarters, we'll see the ramp. And probably we'll get a better understanding of how fast it will at to the maximum capacity.
There are no further questions. So, thank you all for your participation, and this concludes our call. You may now disconnect.