Thank you for standing by, welcome to the AEye Q4 2022 and Full Year 2022 Earnings Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speakers' presentations, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question at that time, please press star one one on your telephone. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Stephen Lambright, Chief Managing Officer. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining AEye's Q4 and year-end 2022 Earnings Call. With me today are Matt Fisch, Chief Executive Officer, and Bob Brown, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, we announced our financial results for the Q4 and full year 2022. A copy of our press release can be found on our website at investors.aeye.ai. Before we begin, I would like to remind participants that today's discussion may include forward-looking statements as defined in the securities laws and regulations of the U.S. with reference to future events, future operating results or financial performance. Forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions regarding our business, the industry, and other conditions. These forward-looking statements are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances that are difficult or impossible to predict. Our actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. We caution you, therefore, against placing undue reliance on any of these forward-looking statements. You can find more information about the risks, uncertainties, and other factors in our reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in our more recent periodic report. All information discussed today is as of March 15th, 2023. We do not intend and undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future developments, or otherwise, except as may be required by law. In addition, today's discussion will include references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are presented for supplemental information purposes only and should not be considered as a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of the measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in our press release. You should refer to our reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in our earnings release. Now, let me pass the call over to Matt. Thank you, Steve. Good afternoon, and welcome to our Q4 and year-end 2022 earnings call. I'm Matt Fisch, AEye CEO. I am joined on the call today by our CFO, Bob Brown. I will begin the call by introducing myself, sharing some insights into what I've learned in my first month on the job, and some initial thoughts on where we go from here. I will then hand the call to Bob, who will review AEye's financial performance for Q4 and full 2022 fiscal year, as well as a few comments on our 2023 outlook. We will open the call for questions. Let me start by telling you a bit about myself and why I'm thrilled to be here. Over the past 30 years, I have delivered transformational products that have supported the rapid evolution of the automotive and technology industries. I'm excited about the opportunity for AEye to become a premier sensing technology provider. To do this, I will leverage my extensive experience with systems, software, and scaling large product organizations, as I did during my prior leadership roles at Gentherm, Harman, and Intel. I recently led the technology team at Gentherm, a $1.3 billion developer of thermal management technologies. Under my leadership, we delivered innovative products to the automotive market that aligned with the industry's shift to electrification and created new value propositions with systems and software. At AEye, our software definable LIDAR is also at the center of this transformation. I will lead our team to enhance, productize, and monetize AEye's platform and product portfolio to power the next generation of advanced driver-assistance systems and drive greater efficiency, productivity, and safety in smart infrastructure and other industrial markets. Throughout my career, I've consistently pursued opportunities that have the vision and capacity to change the world, to have an impact, to create opportunities that didn't previously exist. This is more than a passion. My track record shows I thrive and succeed when presented with the challenge of bringing revolutionary technologies to market. My greatest satisfaction and success comes from making a difference. AEye's technology has the potential to be transformative. I joined AEye because I believe it has all the ingredients for commercial success. We have industry-leading technology, a unique and compelling business model, a healthy commercial pipeline, a stellar team, and exceptional business partners like Continental. Continental has the proven ability to deliver full stack advanced driver-assistance systems to the automotive and trucking markets. Over the years, they have delivered over 150 million sensors across dozens of product lines, making them one of the leading integrated ADAS solution providers in the world. For me, the most powerful market validation is that Continental selected AEye's technology for productization and integration into their industry-leading ADAS product portfolio. We continue to receive positive feedback from OEM customers regarding Continental's automotive production intent B sample, giving me great confidence that we have the right product market fit for the next generation of advanced driver assistance systems. In my first month at AEye, I'm thoroughly impressed with the vitality and creativity of the team. The culture and energy here is remarkable. It has me excited about what's to come. My immediate task at hand is to set clear objectives and focus our efforts and remove impediments so that our team can successfully execute and achieve our goals. To that end, I've been working with the executive team to develop a go forward plan that aligns our strengths with our objectives. We are well underway, but this takes time and careful consideration. My commitment to you is that we will come back to you in our May earnings call with my plan for the company and a timeline to which you will be able to hold me and the executive team accountable. We will align our innovative 4Sight platform with the most promising opportunities and focus on a set of achievable objectives that will define success for AEye and its shareholders. I'm excited to be here. AEye is well positioned with exceptional technology and talent, and I look forward to sharing our vision for the next phase of AEye's evolution at our earnings call this May. At this point, I will turn it over to Bob Brown to review the details of our financial performance last quarter and last year. Bob? Thanks, Matt. Welcome, everyone. Revenue in the Q4 was $1.1 million, up 42% from the Q3. Our development contract services revenue was stronger in the Q4 due to contract specific progress in our automotive business. Revenue for the full year was $3.6 million, up 21% from the prior year. We managed our spending carefully throughout the year as we continued to focus our resources on the most impactful areas of our business. GAAP operating expenses were $22 million in the Q4, an increase of 2.9% from the prior quarter due to a favorable item in the Q3 that did not repeat in the Q4. Our non-GAAP operating expenses were $16 million in the Q4, up from $15.1 million in the Q3. Net loss in the Q4 was $23.7 million on a GAAP basis, up slightly from a net loss of $23.6 million in the Q3. GAAP EPS was a loss of $0.15 per share in the Q4, which was flat relative to the prior quarter. Net loss on a non-GAAP basis in the Q4 was $17.5 million, and non-GAAP EPS was a loss of $0.11, which was flat relative to non-GAAP EPS in the Q3. Non-GAAP net loss for the full year was $73.8 million, which represented a substantial improvement relative to our initial expectations for a non-GAAP net loss of $100 million at the beginning of 2022. Net cash used in operating activities for the Q4 was $16.1 million, which improved from $22.4 million in the Q3. The quarter-over-quarter improvement was primarily driven by cash used in the Q3 for working capital and for annual prepaid insurance costs that did not recur in the Q4. We're continuing to manage our cash very carefully, especially in this environment, and we're focusing our cash outlays on critical areas that clearly support our strategy and product development. Our capital expenditures in the quarter were very modest at $800,000, reflecting our unique capital light model and our partnerships with manufacturers like Continental and Sanmina. We ended the year with $94.2 million of cash equivalents, and marketable securities on our balance sheet. We believe this provides us with a solid financial base to support our business as we head into what's expected to be a challenging economic climate in 2023. We've received many questions over the last several days about our exposure to Silicon Valley Bank or SVB. The vast majority of our cash equivalents, and marketable securities are held in our account with a much larger bank, which was unaffected by SVB's issues. While we were also an SVB customer, we regained full access to our SVB accounts as of Monday morning. Turning to our external sources of funds, you may recall that we issued a convertible note in September, which provided us with $10 million of proceeds. Thus far, we have paid the monthly installments required under the note in cash rather than shares. We have the right, subject to certain conditions, to issue another convertible note to the same investor in 2023 in the same amount and on the same terms. We also continue to have access to our equity line of credit facility as an additional source of liquidity. We did not issue any shares under that facility in the Q4. Let me address our near-term outlook. We are maintaining a cautious view on the business in the Q1. We expect revenue for the Q1 to be in the range of $500,000-$700,000. We have temporarily slowed production of our 4Sight industrial product in Q1 as we complete the second phase of the transfer of production to our manufacturing partner and complete the planned validation of the product built in the production environment. While volumes are expected to be modest in the near term, we are continuing several proof of concept deployments of our LIDAR with key customers, particularly in the ITS market. In response to the uncertain environment we noted earlier, we have been managing our spending carefully. We expect our Q1 operating expenses to be up approximately 10%-15% from the Q4, based primarily on the timing of certain development projects. We expect our non-GAAP EPS to be a loss of approximately $0.13 in the Q1. Let me conclude by saying that while we expect to feel the impacts of a potential recession and ongoing supply chain challenges in the near term, we are well-positioned to navigate through this period. The secular backdrop for LIDAR adoption across the automotive and industrial markets remains compelling, and the feedback we're getting from OEM customers on Continental's automotive production and 10 B sample continues to be very encouraging. With that, we'll open the line for questions. Operator? We're slowing production, as we said, in Q1, and this is really related to doing validation and testing on that product. We've held off a bit on production here in Q1. That's what you're seeing in the Q1 impact. It's gonna be very minor volumes here in Q1 as we work through that. The hardware is in very good shape, so we've been getting good feedback from the field, on how those hardware units are performing in the field. We are doing an update to the software. We got a pretty significant software revision that we wanna roll out. As a result of that, we wanna do a formal testing on that, make sure we've got it rock solid before we start getting into further production. We're not gonna give guidance for the full year. We're really just guiding at Q1 at this point, Suji. We do expect to have more production again here in Q2 when we get there. Q1 is gonna be light because of those reasons. Matt, I don't know if you wanna comment further on what we're doing around the software side and how that relates to the production. Yeah. Thanks, Bob. Just to give a little bit of color to that, one of the things we're learning as we're going through this manufacturing transition is that there are some differences in requirements between the industrial and the automotive markets. Just to make it very clear, an example of that being twenty-four by seven operation of the LIDAR system that's required in industrial, whereas that requirement does not exist in such a strong form in the automotive space. That's an example of the learnings that we're having as we're doing this transition outside of automotive into other markets. The good news here is that what we're finding is that because of the foundation of software programmability of our platform, we're able to address these issues without having to redesign the product, essentially. Okay, great. Maybe my next question could be on the visibility here. Can you talk about the pipeline, the number of engagements, and maybe weave into that Continental and the next steps with the partner there? Yeah, I'll take that one. We have line of sight at this point in time into 6 very clear automotive OEM engagements. Look, I've been in the automotive business for several years and have some very good insight at this point into, you know, the signals of how these deals are going. Based on that, I feel very confident that before the end of this year, we're gonna get some clear decisions on a subset of those, for sure. Okay, great. Maybe last question for Matt. Matt, since you've come in, can you talk about the AEye product in the LIDAR market and the technology differentiation? From your perspective, what you're hearing from customers and what you think is gonna resonate as you do compete. It's a crowded LIDAR market. I'd love to hear your thoughts coming out of the gate here. Absolutely. I think first and foremost, we have best-in-class distance of, you know, long distance detection of objects. This is really an essential piece of higher levels of autonomous driving. That's really a key piece of differentiation for us. Also what I've really been impressed by is the actual design of the product, which minimizes the size and number of moving parts, mechanically speaking. That's gonna be a clear advantage as we get further down the road, especially into the design validation testing and reliability testing that's required of the automotive industry. This is really gonna be a key hurdle and challenge for everyone. Our design, I would say, is about as close as you can get to solid state at this point. Then we get to it earlier is the flexibility and the programmability of the design. For example, being able to change scan patterns, which allows us to deal with a wide range of issues or learnings that we're having in the field. Those are the top three that really stood out to me and, you know, drove my choice to join this company. I think it's fantastic. Okay, great. Appreciate the color, Matt. Thanks. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Suji Desilva. Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Joseph Osha of Guggenheim Partners. Your line is open. Hi. Hello? Can you hear me? There was some echo there. We can. Hi, Joe. Okay. Hey, best of luck, Bob, with the next, the next venture. Go Blue, of course. Thank you, Joe. you know, in 2000... You finished the year with about $95 million in cash. It's a lot of money. You burned about $71 million. understanding of course, that the plan is still coming together, you know, how much runway do you guys feel like you need to have before the business begins to support itself? Because, you know, if you operate the business like it's been running for the last year, you're gonna run out of money early in 2024. I'm just wondering what sort of initial signposts you can give us for thinking about how you're gonna manage the company's remaining cash. Absolutely. Thanks for the question, Joe. As you said, we had $94 million in cash at 12/31. From where we're standing today, we feel confident we've got at least a year's worth of cash on the balance sheet from today. You'll see that in our 10-K that we mentioned that when that is published here shortly. As you know, given the cash balance, we do have some flexibility on timing. There's not an urgency to do something, although we do intend to raise some capital at some point here. We'll say more about that in the future. We're not gonna guide further than that at this moment. Given Matt's only been in the chair for 30 days here, I think we're gonna give Matt a chance to finish his strategic analysis here, and then I think we'll come back in May with some further thoughts about how we're gonna take the company forward and what that implies for the cash. Yeah. I'll just add one thing to that. You know, I've been digging into, especially the customer engagements. Over the last 30 days, there's definitely opportunity for focus. Looking at those signals that I mentioned earlier, I think we can get more focus. That's really a key initiative from my end. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks, Joe. Thank you. Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Tom Diffely of D.A. Davidson. Your line is open. Hi. Go ahead, Tom. This is Linda. Can you hear me? Yes. This is Linda with D.A. Davidson on behalf of Tom Diffely. Congratulations on your progress, thank you for letting us ask questions. Welcome, Matt, and best of luck with your next steps, Bob. My first question, if I remember correctly, you expected some supply chain challenges to last longer, and I was wondering if you could provide any update on the ramp with 4Sight M given those supply chain challenges. If you could give us some color on how the order bookings look like at the moment the growth trajectory there throughout next year. Yeah, you bet. Thank you, Linda. In terms of the supply chain challenges, some of those problems are still there. There are still some key parts that we would classify as long lead time types of parts. It's taking longer to get those. There are also still some PPV challenges, where parts are still priced above where you would normally see them priced, if there were not the supply chain challenges in place. I'd say it's getting better. We are seeing some improvement, but I would say those issues are still lingering. It's not hurting us too much in terms of the production at this point. As we said, for Q1, the key issue there is just doing this software revision and the testing and validation. I don't think that'll be a big limiter in terms of production for this year. You know, we are working closely with customers. As we said in the prepared remarks, you know, we are focusing, and we're gonna spend quite a bit of time in that space in systems, so it'll be a lot of focus around that area this year. Matt, I don't know if you wanna add further in terms of the customer engagements and visibility from what you've seen so far. All right. No, I think it's a good summary, Bob. As we're looking at things right now, it's the software and getting those updates done that's really on the critical path. Great. I appreciate the color. Last quarter, you had mentioned some successes in trucking, and I was wondering, where, at the moment you're sitting with that. Have you seen any more engagement there? How are you looking at it? Right. I had alluded to the OEM engagements in general earlier, but specifically for the announcement I think you're referring to, we did have a press release out in October of last year. For strategic reasons, we did agree with the trucking platform partner to delay disclosing their identity until a later date. We don't have an update on that today, but you can refer to that press release that came out in October. Sounds good. My last question. I might have missed it, but besides, the impacts of the manufacturing transitions in 1Q, could you provide any context for what the revenue run rate looks like for this year, beyond 1Q? Yeah, we think there's an opportunity for modest growth this year. you know, that won't be, you know, easy from where we're starting, right? It's a slow start to the year, as you see, in terms of the guidance, but, you know, we feel like we've got the opportunity to generate some modest growth this year. That's what we're gonna be working towards on the top line. Got it. I I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Linda. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of John Roy of Water Tower Research. Your line is open. Hey, can you hear me okay? I'm hearing an echo. Yeah, we can hear you okay, John. No, no echo on our end. Great. Matt, you know, the signals that you're seeing from the automotive industry, I wonder if you can give in your background, could you give us a little, maybe a little more color and related to your experience as to how that might play out? As a corollary to that, I'm also curious. In your new role, how are you going to engage with customers? Are you going to be really out there on the forefront trying to make it rain and that? What is your thinking there? Yeah, absolutely. Why don't I, why don't I take on the second part of the question first. Getting out and hearing firsthand what customers are saying, and especially the various components of our partnership with Conti, first and foremost, for me and Morty, you know, booking travel to make those arrangements. Especially given that we're in this go-to-market phase right now, and a little bit of my, or a lot of bit of my technical background weighing in, it's super important to really understand what the friction points, the constraints, and the problems that customers are trying to solve. Bringing that perspective back into the company and translating that to a set of objectives for the team and priority and focus, that's a key part of the game plan here. Just as an example, now getting back to the first part of your question, I recently worked for a Tier 1 provider in the automotive space, called Gentherm. We had a pretty deep engagement with General Motors that's public now, bringing a new category of product into market with one of their new vehicles. I've been on the front lines of that for the last three years. You know, seeing the moving parts of what, you know, what those signals are, if you will, that tell us, "Hey, the customer is really engaged with us in a very material and meaningful way. " Leading indicator towards success on a series production award. I just experienced that firsthand with a new category of product this last three years in my most recent assignment. I'm definitely making those connections, to what's going on, with AEye's engagements with our customers. We're in the money. We're in the mix. It sounds good. You had mentioned that software is gonna be a key point going forward in terms of development. Do you guys feel like you need to staff up a little more, given that, you know, you might be putting a lot more effort into the software? Software's always been a critical priority for the company. It's deeply woven into the product architecture and value proposition. Look, as the automotive industry is embracing more of the software-defined vehicle concept, I think this is gonna be a catalyst for pulling in LIDAR as a solution beyond autonomous driving, if you will. Certainly, I believe that there will be a pull for LIDAR early on. We got to get the hardware in the vehicle so the data collection can begin. As soon as we start talking about data collection and analysis to feed into autonomous driving, even the huge amount of software involved in that. We're on it and staffing and investing appropriately. Great, Matt. Thank you so much. Bob, congratulations, and we'll talk to you soon. Great. Thanks. Thanks very much, John. Appreciate it. Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. Let's turn the call back over to Matt Fisch, CEO, for any closing remarks. I want to thank everybody for joining our call today. In closing, I believe AEye is well positioned with exceptional technology, talent, and partners. I look forward to provision for the next phase of AEye's evolution in our earnings call. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.