Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the first quarter results of 2026 RoboSense Technology company related earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode after today's presentation. There will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Grace, the Investor Relationships Director. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to RoboSense earnings conference call for the first quarter of 2026. The company's earnings results were released earlier today and are available on our IR website, www.ir.robosense.com. The website of Hong Kong Stock Exchange, www.hongkongexchangenews.hk as well as on Newswire Services. Today you will hear from Mr. Kelvin Lau, our CFO, and Mr. Johnson Wan, our Deputy Chief Financial Officer, who will take you through the company's operational and financial results for the first quarter of 2026. After their prepared remarks, Kelvin and Johnson will be available to answer a few questions.
Before we continue, please note that the discussion today may contain certain forward-looking statements which involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which are beyond our control and may cause our actual results, performance or achievements or industrial results to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. In light of risks and uncertainties, the inclusion and the forward-looking statements in this discussion should not be regarded as a representation by the board of directors or RoboSense that the plans and objectives will be achieved. The shareholders and investors of the company should not place undue reliance on such statements. RoboSense does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required and will involve by law.
Please note that some of the information to be discussed, including non-IFRS financial measures, are not reconciled or presented in accordance with IFRS. The IFRS financial measure and information according those non- FRS financial measures to RoboSense financial results prepared in accordance with IFRS are included in RoboSense first quarter results announcement, which has been posted on the company's IR website at www.ir.robosense.com and the website of Hong Kong Stock Exchange, www.hongkongexchangenews.hk. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. A webcast of this conference call is available on RoboSense investor relations website. I will now turn the call over Kelvin Lau, the CFO of RoboSense.
All right. Thank you, Grace. RoboSense delivered a solid start to 2026, boosting robust revenue growth while accelerating the industry shift to next generation digital LiDAR. The company's leadership at the center of physical AI, powering intelligent vehicles and a broad range of robotic platforms. From robotaxi and robovan to robotic lawnmower, commercial cleaning system, autonomous robot, and beyond, with our proprietary stacked SoC LiDAR chips was reinforced in Q1 2026. All right, first, I'll fundamentally share with you some of the key highlights of our Q1 2026 performance. Our revenue reached RMB 158.8 million, up about 39.9% year-over-year. Total LiDAR shipment reached 333,300 units, increased by about 204.1% year-over-year. Robotic LiDAR volume tremendously increased by 1,458.8% year-over-year to 185,500 units, accounting for about 56.2% of our shipments.
RoboSense maintained the leading global share across multiple robotic LiDAR niches and ranked among the top domestic suppliers for intelligent robots, robotic lawnmower and commercial cleaning systems. Camera solutions secured warning orders from leading European autonomous robot manufacturers, advancing robotic efforts from verification to full-scale mass production. Final order backlog on hand exceeded 9 million units for ADAS. RoboSense regularly has a long-featured seasonal pattern of lower sales volume of LiDAR products for ADAS application in the first half of a year, and higher shipment of LiDAR products for ADAS application in the second half of a year.
Our overall gross margin dropped slightly to 21.7% in Q1 2026 from 23.5% in Q1 2025, mainly attributable to higher overhead incurred in manufacturing our new EMX LiDAR products in the initial mass production stage. However, benefiting from concentrated delivery of new automotive vehicles in the second half of the year, incremental market demand in the robotic sectors, coupled with cost optimization of self-developed chips and improved capacity utilization, the company's management team maintains full confidence in the company's future development prospect. In April 2026, RoboSense launched EOCENE, its self-developed SPAD-SoC digital architecture platform, together with two breakthrough proprietary chips. The first one is Phoenix. Phoenix adopts a native integrated design with single chip and single optical path. This supports 2,160 lines and has passed the AEC-Q100 automotive grade qualification certification with full qualification for automotive-grade mass production.
The four-megapixel high-definition LiDAR solution built on Phoenix has secured design wins from leading automakers, and is scheduled to realize mass production and vehicle installation within 2026. Another chip is called Peacock. Peacock is the world's highest resolution large-area array SPAD SoC chip, as well as the highest specification mass-producible area array chip in the current industry, reaching VGA-level 3D imaging standards. Products equipped with Peacock chips has commenced small batch delivery and is scheduled to kick off large-scale mass production in the third quarter of this year. These in-house SPAD SoC chips form the core technological moat that will drive LiDAR leadership for the next decade. 2026 marks a critical transition year for the global LiDAR industry, defined by a broad technological shift from traditional analog and mechanical LiDAR architecture to next-generation digital LiDAR systems.
This industry transition raises the overall technical bar for LiDAR beam count and imaging resolution, which is essential to support safer and more reliable autonomous driving, and paves the way for broader adoption of L3 and L4 functionality over the next three years. Legacy analog and mechanical LiDAR solutions are fundamentally limited by the inherent hardware physics in resolution and beam density, making them unable to meet the evolving requirement of high level autonomous driving. RoboSense continues to lead the industry's digital transformation, anchored by our proprietary SPAD SoC chips architecture. The company is scheduled to start the mass production of our new in-house developed perception chips, Phoenix and Peacock, in the second half of the year. With our early mover technology advantage, RoboSense is at the forefront of driving the industry-wide shift towards pure digital LiDAR.
We expect gradual gross margin improvement as more product lines migrate to our fully in-house chip solution. Our cost structure will be optimized step by step, supporting steady margin recovery over time. Ultimately, these full-stack technological upgrades enable RoboSense to deliver higher resolution, safer, and more reliable sensing solutions to our OEM and robotic customers, strengthening our long-term product value and market positioning amidst the rapid evolution of physical AI. Driven by near-year cost model grants, explosive robotic demand, ongoing chip cost optimization, and rising capacity utilization, RoboSense maintains a confident long-term outlook. As an AI technology platform executing its field core automotive and robotic strategy, we are well-positioned to capture the multi-year growth of the physical AI market, delivering sustainable value for shareholders while advancing a safer and smarter world.
Looking forward, RoboSense remains dedicated to innovation in AI algorithms and hardware technologies, while continuously reinforcing its leading position in ADAS driving and robotic industry. We are committed to becoming a global leading robotic technology platform company, integrating long-term and stable market value and sustainable benefits for the industry. Now, I would like to turn the call to Johnson.
Thank you, Kelvin. You've just heard from our CFO, Kelvin, that walked you through our Q1 highlights. I wanted to first address some of the key questions I know you guys will ask, from a lot of the people on my, also my friends. I wanted to answer some of the tough questions that I know I'll be getting from you guys when we open the floor for questions. I also want to set the scene on how one should think about RoboSense going forward. First and foremost, RoboSense is a physical AI company, right? Humans perceive 80%-90% of the world through vision.
Our LiDAR and next generation LiDAR camera solutions are the eyes. We are delivering superhuman vision to power the physical world of AI. That is, of course, built upon our in-house SPAD SoC that we've already spent eight years researching and developing. This breakthrough will unlock substantial new TAM across many sectors that were actually not explored previously for LiDAR, which will enable us to capture market share from traditional cameras in a wide range of industrial scenarios, including factory automation, humanoid robots, passenger vehicles. Now, the market right now is heavily focused on upstream AI infrastructure names as a core investment theme, and has largely overlooked the booming physical AI segment. As you can tell from our strong shipment growth, all our business lines are gaining strong momentum, and the LiDAR adoption cycle is still in the early stages.
It's only a matter of time before the market fully recognizes this tremendous opportunity. Turning back to our Q1 results. We have very strong top-line growth, 40% growth year-over-year, shipment more than 200%. Simply put, the strategic priority for RoboSense in 2026 is market share expansion. We'll continue to extend our competitive advantage, especially in robotics LiDAR, which is a segment that we see a structurally healthier gross margin of around 30%-40%. We're very happy to announce that we are number one in market share across many robotic runways, such as robotaxis, lawnmowers, commercial cleaning, robodogs, mining trucks, and many more. We plan to steadily scale these high-margin businesses to strengthen the overall profitability of our company. On the ADAS front, gross margins faced temporary gross margin pressure, and that is a function of a deliberate and strategic product transition that we've undertaken.
We're actually proactively driving all our major OEM partners to migrate from legacy analog and mechanical LiDAR to our SPAD SoC-based solutions, and we've actually made substantial progress so far. Now, today, approximately 50% of our ADAS shipments are actually SPAD-based units. Our first-generation SPAD chips are, however, currently sourced externally, which will, however, push up the component cost and weigh on short-term gross margins. Now, additionally, we've actually ramped up our factory automation to prepare for in-house chip production, and that has also contributed to the year-over-year margin compression. Now, that said, we want to reiterate that the current margin pressure is temporary. Our self-developed SPAD SoC chips will enter mass production in the second half, and this will help us bring notable chip cost reductions.
Even so, and we have to admit that our ADAS gross margin stayed below 20% in Q1, and is expected to remain below this level for most of 2026. As a result, RoboSense will strive to achieve profitability for the full year of 2026. We view these investments as highly value-attribute rather than a negative outcome. Onboarding top-tier OEMs onto our SPAD architecture will actually build lasting customer stickiness, raise switching costs, and further fortify our long-term technological moat. We are already in active discussions with OEMs on the next-generation vehicle LiDAR projects, and all our partners have expressed to us a clear demand for higher line count products for next year, which will create a distinct technological gap between RoboSense and our peers by 2027. It is clear that our OEM partners are positioning themselves for higher line count products.
Our external chip procurement strategy in first half will lead us to a cost advantage. You can think of us as just taking the pain first. Now, I know you guys will also ask about our ASP, which fell 55% year-over-year in the first quarter. The pace of decline will moderate as we go towards the second half of the year. Broadly speaking, our ASP decline, even though it's comparable to peers, the underlying causes are fundamentally different. Our ASP compression is actually driven by mainly changes in the product mix, and not so much a function of the price competition. If you look at our lawnmower LiDAR volume, that was close to zero in Q1 2025, but that contributed meaningfully to our robotics volume in Q1 2026.
Second, we shipped a meaningful amount of our E1 blind spot LiDAR in this quarter. These two product lines collectively accounted for more than 50% of our Q1 total shipments, and those products carry a lower average selling price compared to our flagship automotive LiDAR products. With that, I want to open the floor now for questions.
Thank you for the presentation. We will now open the floor for questions. Participants are welcome to raise their hands to ask questions or submit them via text. We're now on queue and in sessions. If you have any questions, for phone participants, please press asterisk and one, and for online participants, please press raise hand button on your phone or leave your questions on the chat box. We now invite the participant whose phone number ends in 6368 to ask a question. Please state your name and institution before asking your question.
Hi, management. Thank you for taking my question. This is Joey Young from DORCA Securities. I have one question regarding your ASP. We see as this shift towards higher performance products or more premium products may benefit into overseas or trans-central clients. I was wondering if there is any chance that there will be a potential inflection point for ASP in second half of 2026 or in 2027. Thank you.
Thank you, Joey. Yes, good question, and also it's commonly asked by quite a lot of investors. Joey, I think you may be aware that LiDAR ASP, I think in the past two years keep on decreasing from, for example, in 2023, I think the LiDAR ASP is around RMB 3,500, and then dropped to RMB 2,500 in 2024, and then further dropped to around RMB 1,200 in the second half of 2025. I can tell you, I think this type of price deflation already close to a long term, close end. Why I say so because, if you look at this question, you have to divide the LiDARs into two categories. One is the high performance, high beam count LiDARs. Another one is the price point LiDAR, the lower or laser beam count LiDARs.
As what Johnson mentioned, I think in his remark, right now, I think going forward we will see that in most of the automakers, they are now transitioning to adopt high performance and high laser count LiDARs. This type of trend will become the major mainstream, I think, this type of configuration for all those OEMs. I think for high laser beam LiDAR specification, I think going forward is an irreversible industrial trend going forward. Of course, I think this type of high performance, high laser count LiDAR deserve for higher ASP, higher price. However, I think this type of high laser beam LiDAR does not equate to higher production cost because our self-developed in-house chips can also, I think, bring in more significant cost advantages to reduce the production cost.
All those high laser beam LiDAR, I think, for example, 720 laser version is already going forward will be regarded as a minimum standard configuration for all those automakers. Therefore, for all those high laser beam, we believe, the ASP can be stabilized and also possible, I think there will be a slightly uptick for those high laser beam LiDARs. I think for all those lower laser beam LiDARs, like blind spot LiDAR, going forward, with the increase in the installation rate and the penetration rate of this type of blind spot LiDAR, we can enjoy a higher economy of scale and further reduce the cost. Then we forecast, I think for this type of blind spot LiDAR, going forward the ASP will drop a little bit.
Net-net, I would say combined together, the overall ASP for overall LiDAR, I think can be stabilized going forward. Will not happen again, like two to three years ago, I think there was a significant drop in the ASP. It will not happen again. This is what we believe. Yeah.
Thank you so much. That is very clear.
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Yeah, thanks for taking my questions. This is Sherry Liu from JPMorgan. Also want to congrats on the robust volume and revenue growth. We're also glad to see a more balanced product mix in terms of volume. We do see the blended growth margin dropped on a year-on-year basis. I think Johnson already mentioned margin pressure from out-sourced chips. Could you elaborate a bit more on the reasons behind the margin correction? Thank you.
Thank you, Sherry, for your question. To elaborate, I think there are probably a few reasons, and externally sourced chips is only one of the few reasons. First of all, we all know this year's auto market is lower than previous years because of the overdraft in subsidies. As a result of poor sales on the automotive side, that has actually led to lower utilization rate of our facilities, and that actually increased our fixed cost. Second of all, as we are now upgrading all our lines to digital LiDAR, we've actually had to put in new pieces of machinery, and that actually increased our cost. Until they're fully ramped up, that will also impact our gross margins.
Third, we've also seen an increase in some of the raw material costs. As you are aware that there is a global commodity inflation that is happening only on certain products. Also our cost reductions with our upstream suppliers in terms of those negotiations have not yet fully been completed, and those negotiations will be completed throughout the year. Of course, the last reason was the externally sourced chip question, which is as we can migrate to more of our in-house SPAD SoC chip, that will actually help improve the margin profile of our company in the coming quarters and months once we fully migrate to our in-house SPADs.
That's about it. Thank you, Johnson.
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Yeah, thank you for taking my question. This is Kai Chi from Zenimo Securities. My question is about self SPAD. We noticed that compared with major suppliers such as Sony, what are key performance advantages of our in-house biotechnology? Also compared with third-party solutions, how much impact do in-house chips have on product pricing and overall cost structure? In addition, how is the mass production ramp-up from products based on the company's in-house chips such as the Phoenix and Peacock? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for your question. To answer your question, in terms of, I think the core advantages of our self-developed in-house product chips. I think the most important, number one is, I think our superior comprehensive performance of our self-developed chips. I think our self-developed in-house product chips can support higher laser beam line specification, and also with optimized cost structure. That's number one. Number two, I think very importantly, and I mean this is the PDE, the photon detection efficiency. Our in-house chips, I think the capacity can reach approximately 45% of the PDE. Which is well above, I think, the industrial average. It's very important. I think the third, another important point is, I think it's the cost efficiency. If we compare with all those similar chips or the equivalent chips we purchase from third parties.
In terms of cost, we can cut the cost by about 50%, cut the cost by half. I think it's a very obvious and very important cost efficiency factor to best consider. Also, as I say, our chips can support ultra-high laser beam. Right now our chips can support as we've got laser beam up to 2,060 laser beam. Going forward, our next generation product chips can achieve the laser beam line existing around 4,000 laser beam line. Lastly, these chips provide a more compact chip dimension. These are all the core advantages why we focus on developing our in-house provided chips. It's very important for the future competition in this industry. In terms of the mass production timeline, we mentioned this before of the Phoenix chips.
For Phoenix chips, we already obtained design wins from some leading OEMs in the market already, and we expected to start the mass production of our Phoenix chips, I think maybe in terms of most probably in the second half of this year. Our Peacock chips. Peacock, I think we already right now currently we already achieved a small batch delivery, as I mentioned in my remarks already. We will end the mass production in Q3 of this year. You will see, I think this type of high-performance customized chips, you will find there's so many right now in the market. Going forward, we strongly believe that as a company, I think self-developed high-performance chips tailor-made to our OEM customer and also our robotic customer, will become a certainty. I think going forward it's an initial trend going forward, yeah.
Thank you. It is very helpful. Thank you very much.
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Hi, management. This is Yu Ho from CSA. Thank you for taking my question and congrats on your strong results. My question is about your RGB-D solution, SPAD technology. We see the peers also launched the 3D full-color products. Could you help us understand and share more details on the key difference between your RGB-D solution and peers' full-color approach? Also, you have already established a leading position in SPADs associated technology. Going forward, what product or pricing strategy will you plan to adopt to strengthen and monetize this advantage? Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. I think you have seen on the media that some of our competitors or peers have actually launched similar RGBD camera products. For example, Ouster in the U.S. also launched the product recently. I think the core difference of our product versus that of others is that, first of all, we have our own in-house SPAD SoC chip, right? That our line count has now reached 2,160 lines, and our next generation product is going to be double that, right, in terms of the line count. If you think back to LiDAR, we always communicated our LiDAR beam count using lines, right? If I was to convert that into resolution or pixels, 120 lines is only 150,000 pixels. It's actually very poor in terms of resolution.
When we get to 2,160 lines, that's actually 4 million pixels. When we get to 4,300 lines, it's going to be 8 million pixels. The human eye, the cornea of your eye is actually 6 million-8 million pixels. For the first time ever, we are able to create a sensor that is better, if not on par, with the human eye. That's why I refer to our LiDAR solution or LiDAR camera solution as a superhuman vision solution that many people have actually not thought about what LiDAR is capable of doing. It is definitely going to replace a lot of the camera solutions that are in the market right now. I want to give you a couple of examples of where we can deploy these products.
First of all, you can think about just an auto itself, right? A typical car can have, let's just say, one LiDAR, 12 cameras, 6 mm ultrasonic radars. What if I was to tell you that we can start replacing a lot of the cameras on the cars now by using our LiDAR camera. That in itself is a significant impact. Second of all, you'll also see that there are a lot of scenarios on the industrial side, such as industrial inspection, that the LiDAR solution is probably cheaper and more precise versus that of some of the 3D vision solutions that are out there. This RGB-D camera or LiDAR camera that we're going to be launching very soon, it's going to be game-changing. I don't want to disclose too many details of our product until it's officially launched, but please be on the lookout for this product.
Got it. Looking forward to that. Thank you.
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Thanks for taking my question. Here is Sarah from China Galaxy International. My first question is about our chip business. We established the in-house chip strategy back in 2017. Could you please share more what are the key advantages we have observed now? My second question is about the market share. What are the key factors that will help the company continue gaining market share going forward? How will the company further strengthen its leading position and capture a bigger market share in the future? Thanks.
Good question. Okay. Thank you so much. Yes, again, I think quite a lot of investors are asking us why we established our in-house chip development teams, I think back to 2017. Starting back to 2017, we already realized that, okay, going forward, we want to capture a larger market share in the LiDAR industry. We have to have our own self-developed in-house provider relationships. Okay. Why? Okay. First of all, in-house developers, semiconductor chips, definitely the number one is we can use our self-developed chips to strengthen our core competitive advantages. Okay. We can see this going forward, okay, in terms of LiDAR competition. All the competition will focus on the semiconductor chips competition. LiDAR radar has already become a very sophisticated electronic device. Going forward, the competition will focus on the chips development and the advancement of the chips.
Moreover, our SPAD chips will also constitute another core technological barrier for all those newcomers in the future. The second reason is that in-house development chips can facilitate the LiDAR performance upgrade. You can see right now, based on our Peacock, and also our Phoenix chip, we can achieve LiDARs up to a laser beam up to 3,160. In the future, we go up to more than 4,000 laser beams. The high laser beam means the detection rate or the accuracy of the detection of the target object up to 100 meters can be very accurate. This is very important going forward for all those L3 and L4 autonomous driving.
Another one, the third reason is the cost efficiency that I should assume that, okay, in my last question you said, I also mentioned that if you compare the cost of, I think, purchasing all those chips from all those suppliers, et cetera, you compare that with our in-house cost incurred, at least 50% reduction in terms of the cost. Going forward in terms of cost efficiency, I think we can get more advantages on the cost efficiency. Another one is in terms of the long-term strategic value. Everybody know, okay, demand, because all those OEM right now they are demanding for more high laser beam count product going forward. Not because, like BYD, they are asking for at least 720 laser beam going forward. Some of their models will also be put to LiDAR with 2,160 laser beams.
When all those vehicles go into L3+ or L3 or L4 autonomous driving, they will demand for even higher LiDAR. With our own self-development chip, which can develop very high-performance and also more cost-efficient products. We can secure higher market shares in the ADAS with regard to the long run. More local, our self development chips can develop more customized sensor products for our robotic customers like LUBA robot. You will see in the past years, I think we already developed some new products, tailor-made products, for our L UBA Robot and some other robotic customers, all because of our in-house development chips. In terms of the technological leadership, we strongly believe that in terms of the progress of developing this type of solid-state chips, we are holding a leading position in the industry compared with our peers.
If you look at all those, some of the investors say, "Okay, why all those pure chip manufacturers, they cannot provide this type of chips for LiDAR companies like RoboSense?" I can tell you this, I think, for all those pure chip manufacturers, they don't know how to do LiDARs. They cannot come out with all those products which 100% fulfill the requirement of a register by LiDAR companies. I think all this, we got to rely on our in-house chip development to support our more advanced products going forward. Another very important point is that, you got to remember that for all those OEM, if you want to shift from one LiDAR supplier to another LiDAR supplier, they have to incur additional shipping cost on the shipping of this type of LiDAR supplier.
At this stage, if we've got a leading position in terms of the high laser beam LiDAR, we can ensure the stickiness of this type of customer relationship with all those OEMs. Going forward, again, that is I think we are going to say, got to hold this type of in-house chip development technology. We are confident that going forward, again, we can capture another market shares in the ADAS and also in the robotic sensors.
Thanks Kelvin. Very clear update from you.
Thank you.
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Good evening, management. This is Xu Li from CICC. Congratulations on the consecutive and strong YOY growth on our shipment and also revenue. I have two questions. The first one is, we found that LiDAR players are all pushing for higher beam counts. RoboSense has already reached 2,160 beams. The question for me is, how much real-world improvement do you actually get from higher resolution for L2+, level three, and level four robotaxi applications? What would you say is the rough upper limit of beams that is really needed? My second question is, looking ahead over the next two to three years, where do you see the main competition in ADAS and robotic sensors? Is it higher resolution, sensor fusion, or cost? How is RoboSense positioning itself in this direction?
Thank you. I'll take this question. I think first of all, if you look at safety for autonomous vehicles, I don't think there is a limit in terms of safety, right? Obviously with a higher beam count to your LiDAR, you are enabling the vehicle to drive safer. For example, a 2,160 line beam LiDAR can see objects that are 600 meters away. For the same LiDAR that was only 128 lines, you can only see the object that's only 100 or so meters away. In which scenario is it safer? Is it the 1,160 scenario or the 128 beam scenario, right? Currently, if you look at a lot of the L2+ vehicles. In this year, they are now adopting EMX, which is the 192 line solution. We are already in talks with a lot of the OEMs for next year's product.
I don't want to disclose too many details, but the jump is going to be a lot higher, and it's not going to be 300 lines. L3, I think currently will, this year, will require about 500 lines because the L3 line and L4 lines have to be quite blurred. EM4 products are typically about 520 lines, and a lot of the robotaxi players right now are equipping their main LiDAR with our EM4 lineup. The 500-plus line lineup for L4 is likely going to go to more than 1,000 lines next year. I think the breakthrough is when we start producing this 2,169, 4,329, because, like I said, we're creating a sensor that is better than the human eye. If we think about it, because LiDAR gives you the depth information.
In the past, we've always been training a lot of the autonomous driving by 2D data that we're getting from the cameras. We're not using the 3D depth information that you actually get from a LiDAR camera. In the future, I actually think a lot more OEMs will adopt our LiDAR camera because it actually can help them save on the compute capacity going forward. Basically, we're at the point where the competition for LiDAR is now all going to be digital-based, and if the competition, therefore, on a digital-based LiDAR is on the chip. I think we have a head start from a lot of our peers since we spent the last eight years doing R&D on this autonomous drive SoC.
Well, thank you so much.
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Hello, this is Ben Wang from Deutsche Bank. I have a question about BYD, your likely most important client. To maybe share more detail about the current cooperation with BYD. RoboSense has been announced to get a 32 exclusive auto BYD model. Have any new developments in the additional security this year, because BYD seems to be have event tomorrow evening. Is there any good news for clients tomorrow? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for your question. Yes. BYD is one of our major customers in this business. If you are to remember last year, in 2025, the LiDAR installation and penetration rate of all those BYD models, I think, is around only 10%, because last year, I think their total shipments about new vehicles, about 3.5 million domestically. Their total LiDAR purchase from RoboSense and our competitors is only around 400,000, 500,000. The penetration rate is only about 10%, something like this. As Wan mentioned before, right now we captured, I think the largest front of the shares from BYD already because of our new product, EMX. I think in terms of functionality, in terms of specification, our EMX, I think, model is more secured than our previous products. We captured more market shares, I think, in BYD.
This year, we forecast, I think the shipment of LiDARs going to BYD is around, from RoboSense, around 450,000 to 600,000. If you look at, I think the total number of their domestic vehicle shipment this year is 3.5 million, almost still the same as last year. That means, I think the penetration rate right now, we estimate is only about equal to about 12%-17% only. I would say, I think this is a comparatively small number, only 12%-17%. Let us see, okay, what they are going to announce, I think, tomorrow in their summit event. I think if you, I think, go back to the Beijing Auto Show, you see that for BYD vehicles, all those lower-priced vehicles like BYD Haiou, Panda Knight, you can see, I think, they started to install LiDARs in these lower-priced vehicles.
We really hope to see, I think, going forward, especially this year, I think increase the LiDAR installation rate, I think the vehicles this year. Okay. Thank you.
I want to just add a quick comment also. I think not only do we have BYD and Geely, that have effectively given us the nod as the primary supplier to LiDAR. If you look at the penetration rate of these two companies combined, their penetration rate for LiDAR stands at about 10%-15%. Over the next few years, we're going to see a lot of growth from these two customers alone, and that will actually help us regain our market share in the LiDAR market. It's safe to say that the market share for RoboSense in terms of in the ADAS market will bottom out. We will probably regain a leading position, likely in 2027, if not 2028, just by the sheer size of these new customers.
That's why I started the call by telling our friends here that market share is a strategic priority for RoboSense in this year. Getting them on board, switching them to our digital LiDAR solutions is key to this.
Starting of this year, you can see that, okay, more and more lower price point vehicles started to install LiDARs like WeRide. We are net-net, I think we are very confident and optimistic, I mean, in terms of the LiDAR penetration rate and going forward.
Great. Thank you.
We now invite the participant whose phone number ends in 7820 to ask a question. Please state your name and institution before asking your question. Thank you.
Hi, this is Shelly from Jefferies. Thanks for taking my question. I've got a couple on the lawnmower business. First on the Roborock partnership you just announced. Any color you can share on the incremental shipment contribution we should expect? Just to get a better sense of the landscape, where does RoboS ense sit in terms of market share in the lawnmower today, and most of your key customers sourced with you? My second question is regarding the shipment trends from here. Looking into the second half, what does the order cycles typically look like with these customers? I'm also curious how you are factoring the potential EU tariff changes at the end of June, and whether you've already seen any pull-forward demand earlier this year that might impact the second half run rate. Thank you.
Thank you, Shelly, for your question. I want to first update our friends here on our 2026 full year volume guidance. We do expect our annual shipments to grow two to three times this year. Last year, our total shipments was about 900,000, among which 600,000 was ADAS and 300,000 was robotics. We're going to build on that and grow our volume two to three times this year. Now, if I look at by segment, the robotics LiDAR segment is probably going to be on the higher end of that range, so closer to three times. The ADAS LiDAR growth segment will be closer to the lower end of that guidance. Now, if I was to look at to answer your question in terms of the lawnmower business.
Yes, we just signed a huge contract, a strategic partnership with Roborock, so that is going to increase our volume. On the lawnmower side, we think the volumes are going to be closer to 600,000 plus. Last year, we were about 200,000 in lawnmowers, and two years ago, we actually had almost no lawnmower volume. You can actually see how fast the robotics segment is growing. It just come from nowhere, right? Our market share in the lawnmower segment right now is about 70%. A lot of the key customers like Qihoo 360, Puma, Roborock, basically, they use our company's products. Now, there is seasonality, though, right? With lawnmowers, and a lot of the shipments from lawnmower happen in Q1 and Q4 of each year because they're used in Q2 and Q3, typically.
Therefore, what you will see in the Q2 is that we're going to have very little contribution from lawnmowers, but higher contribution from the ADAS side. In terms of the tariff, so far in terms of our shipments, we've actually not seen an impact. We've actually seen customers coming in and placing orders for the back half of this year, and that would obviously be already past June. I think a lot of our partners, they also have capacity overseas also. The tariff impact is actually minimized or not as big as what the market thinks it is. We are still seeing extremely strong growth on the lawnmower side.
Thanks, Johnson. Appreciate the colors.
We now invite the participant whose phone number ends in 2650 to ask a question. Please state your name and institution before asking your question. Thank you.
Hi, management. This is Zhang Yu from Potters Recording. Thanks for taking my questions. I'd like to ask about the robotic business. How is the robotic business trending as a share of RoboSense overall business? Which clients are driving the incremental growth? Could you also provide some guidance on this year's shipment volume and overall business progress? Lastly, have there been any new breakthroughs with the overseas robotic client? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for the question. I really love to talk about robotaxi sector, because right now, I would say RoboSense is already holding a dominant position in the robotaxi sector. Everybody knows robotaxi is going to grow very fast, not this year, but I think in two to three years time. In terms of the robotaxi numbers, they will increase significantly in two to three years time. Why I say we are dominant right now in the robotaxi sector is that, you can see last year, in terms of market share in this robotaxi sector, the total share in the market is only about 15,000 only. This year, we estimate, the growth rate will be close to five times.
Even though this is a very small number, I think that's why I say that this type of robotaxi sector is going to have a robust growth in the two to three years time. If you look at our customers in this robotaxi sector. All those four, five big guys, big robotaxi companies are our customers right now, including DiDi, Baidu, Pony.ai, and WeRide. Let me go through all these one by one with you. For DiDi, all the LiDARs right now installed in DiDi's robotaxi company, including the forward-facing LiDAR and also the solid-state blind spot LiDARs, all supplied by RoboSense. Okay. Recently, we already get the opportunity to design win from Baidu. In Baidu's next generation robotaxi, they will adopt our main LiDAR, our EM4 LiDAR as their main LiDAR.
I think we mentioned it before, EM4 is a very powerful LiDAR, long-range LiDAR, also long-range LiDAR with a detection range of 300 meters and also in terms of number of laser beam up to 520 laser beams. Another big client is WeRide. WeRide in their next generation robotaxi GXR, there are high possibilities that they will adopt our EM4 as their main LiDAR as well. They are using our E1 LiDAR as their base for LiDAR. Last but not least, I think Pony.ai. Pony.ai, their seventh and also the eighth generation robotaxi, they are also seriously considering to shift to our EM4 LiDAR as their main LiDAR in the next generation of robotaxi vehicles. You see, that's why I say, we are right now in a very dominant position in the robotaxi status.
Because of our in-house self-development chips and also our more powerful LiDARs. In terms of overseas robotaxi business expansion, I think that is a sensitive thing, what I can disclose to you is that everything is, I think, progressing smoothly. We are talking to all those big robotaxi guys in overseas market. I think going forward, we'll disclose more. I think when we come to a more appropriate moment to disclose all this. I think in terms of EM, I don't think I can disclose to you right now. Another point I want to mention to you, I also clarify to all the investors that right now in my book, all the robotaxi business, I put them right in the robotics and others category. Okay? There's no separate line for the robotaxi because right now the number is still in a very low level.
In two to three years time, when I think the market and also the revenue contribution become a more meaningful level, I will come up with a separate line to disclose more clearly I think the revenue contribution from the robotaxi sector. Thank you.
Due to time constraints, we will now conclude the Q&A session and turn the call back to management for closing remarks.
at www.ir.robosense.ai. Should you have any questions or request for additional information, we encourage you to visit our investor relations site at www.ir.robosense.ai. Thank you so much for everyone.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our call for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.