ECARX Holdings Inc. (ECX)
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Apr 28, 2026, 2:36 PM EDT - Market open
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Earnings Call: Q4 2022

Apr 24, 2023

Speaker 11

Good morning, welcome to our Q4 and full year 2022 earnings conference call. With me today are ECARX Chairman, CEO, and Co-founder Ziyu Shen , Chief Operating Officer Peter Cirino, and Chief Financial Officer Ramesh Narasimhan. As a quick reminder, this call is being recorded. Before we begin the prepared remarks followed by Q&A, please note that we may refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP measures. Today's discussion also contains forward-looking statements based on the environment as we currently see it, as such, it does include risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our filings with the SEC for more information on the specific risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. With that, I'd like to introduce ECARX Chairman and CEO, Ziyu Shen .

Ziyu Shen
Chairman and CEO, ECARX

Thank you, Adam. Hello, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining our first earnings call as a public company following our listing on Nasdaq in December. We are very excited to be here today. For those who are new to our story, I would like to start today's call with a brief overview of our company before discussing our financial results. I will also discuss some of the exciting announcements made at our recent Tech Day, and then turn the call over to Peter and Ramesh for commentary on our strategy, financial performance, and outlook for the year. To begin with, ECARX is a global mobility tech provider working with OEMs to shift the automotive landscape as the industry moves to an all-electrical future.

As OEMs create new vehicle platforms from the ground up, we are developing vertically integrated full-stack solutions which include digital cockpits, chipset solutions, a core operating system, and an integrated software stack, all designed specifically for automotive use, aiming to combine multiple ECUs into a single computing platform, which enables OEMs to develop new applications, services, and revenue streams. As of December 31, our solutions had been integrated into 4.7 million cars worldwide, we continue to shape the interaction between people and vehicles by advancing the technology behind smart mobility products. Six years ago, I co-founded ECARX with Eric Li, founder and Chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, one of the largest automotive groups in the world. Today, we have around 1,500 employees worldwide, of which over 70% are involved in R&D.

Our operations span 10 global centers in cities such as London, Gothenburg, and Shanghai. We work with a total of 12 OEMs and 21 vehicle brands across Asia-Pacific and Europe, including Geely Auto, Lynk & Co, Zeekr, Lotus, Volvo Cars, Polestar, and Smart, as well as 8 different Tier 1 automotive suppliers, including Visteon, Neusoft, Beidou, and Desay SV. In the same way the telephone evolved into a handheld computer, the car of the future will evolve into a computer on wheels. ECARX is at the forefront of this journey, helping to bring automotive intelligence to all. We focus on developing an automotive tech platform that is uniquely informed by our deep-rooted automotive and strategic collaborations. We learned in our early days that the best way to deliver great computing power and experience is to collaborate at the research and the development stage.

For example, we have agreements and strong relationships with cutting-edge companies like AMD, Arm, Volvo, and SiEngine, where we collaborate on an immersive digital copy co-computing platform that is defining the next generation of in-vehicle entertainment and taking the digital customer experience to the next level. Another example is our latest strategic partnership with Unreal Engine, with which we are working on create an enhanced user experience through real-time, 3D immersive virtual effects, which support large-scale triple A games and the extensive gaming ecosystem of the Epic Games Store. We view this as one of the key differentiator aids for ECARX. OEMs benefit from our seamless, deeply integrated solution and work with us as early as day 1 of a new car design.

Looking ahead, we are excited by the opportunity in the large and growing automotive tech industry and believe our cutting-edge solutions and strategic relationships will enable us to continue to capture new market share. Now, I will provide some highlights on our financial performance, which Ramesh will go into in greater detail later. We saw revenue of $560 million for full year 2022, a year-over-year increase of 28% at constant currency. This growth was largely driven by an increase of new digital cockpit sales volume and a favorable sales mix with higher revenues per unit. Demand for our innovative products remains strong as we continue to expand our customer base. In 2022, we introduced and launched new products with vehicle brands such as Lotus, Smart, Citroën, and Mazda.

Alongside our strong top line performance, we also saw significantly improved Adjusted EBITDA loss of $100 million for full year 2022, coming below our projected loss of $162 million for the full years. Importantly, we remain on track to reach Adjusted EBITDA profitability by the end of 2024. Last year was historic one for ECARX, and we are excited to build on this momentum in 2023 and beyond. We look forward to providing more details on our strategic vision, product roadmap, five-years financial targets and growth opportunities at our investor day on Tuesday, May 9 in Europe. I hope you will all attend in order to see our product in action through live demos and meet more of our leadership team.

Before handing off to Peter, I want to highlight a few items from our Tech Day event, which was held last month. With the theme of Enable and Accelerate, we showcased how ECARX is pioneering a new era of intelligent vehicles by bringing the next level of efficiency and computing power to the global automotive market. Business and R&D leaders from more than 10 automakers and their major brands participated in the event, including Mercedes-Benz, Smart, and Porsche, as well as representatives from various emerging EV brands. We were also joined by many of our global partners, such as AMD, emphasizing ECARX comparing technology and the excitement among our stakeholders. During the event, we announced the launch of multiple automotive hardware and software platforms, including the Antora Series, Makalu, the SuperBrain central computing platform, and the Cloudpeak software.

These products will enable our customers to create high quality vehicles and define the next generation of intelligent automotive experience, and importantly, bring their new designs to market at speed. Peter will discuss our strategy, partnerships, and platforms next, and we're looking forward to sharing additional details about our innovative offerings at our Investor Day next month. Peter, over to you.

Peter Cirino
COO, ECARX

Thank you, Ziyu, and good morning, everyone. I'm excited to be here today at our first quarterly earnings as a public company. Demand for our products remains robust across all verticals, and we are continuing to capture market share for our next gen suite of products. One of the key drivers of growth for ECARX has been our focus on innovation. We invest heavily in research and development to introduce cutting-edge technologies and features in our products, which allow us to stay ahead of the curve. During the fourth quarter, we announced the debut of our next generation digital head units in the Lotus Eletre and Smart #1 , helping us to expand across the European market and globally.

The Lotus Eletre leverages ECARX's first dual chip system, enabling server-level computer power and rapid processing, and immersive multi-screen user experience and capacity for continued improvement over the lifetime of the car via over-the-air updates. The Smart #1 is equipped with a co-developed platform delivering a smooth, efficient, and enjoyable user experience that embodies the Smart brand on a system that can run global apps and content. Based on the conversations we are having with OEMs, we believe the demand for these products will continue to remain strong as the industry transitions to solutions that offer more seamless and immersive user experiences. Our focus on innovation and efficiency has also led to a significant increase in our market share.

Our product modularity allows for seamless integration of the ECARX offering across brands, and has been well received by customers across geographies, as we have experienced strong demand in both domestic and international markets. Growth in China, the world's largest automotive market, has been particularly strong, and we are seeing increased interest from OEMs across Europe. As Ziyu noted, we recently shared details of multiple automotive hardware and software computing platforms, including the Antora Series, Makalu, SuperBrain computing central platform, and Cloudpeak software. Our flagship product, the Antora Series, is specifically designed to meet growing demand for system-on-a-chip in the EV and intelligent vehicle markets.

Our advanced 7nm SE1000 System-on-a-Chip provides powerful 100K DMIPS computing power and 900 GFLOPS graphics rendering capability through multi-core heterogeneous automotive computing engine and efficient hardware architecture. The Antora Series includes two core products, Antora 1000 and Antora 1000 Pro, both of which offer low power consumption and are expected to speed up OEM development. Antora 1000 is certified for functional safety and information security and supports rich, intelligent cockpit hardware configurations. While Antora 1000 Pro offers even higher performance with dual powerful computing modules that cooperate at ultra-high speed transmission rates. Our aim with the Antora Series is to increase the overall computing power of the car and help OEMs move away from replacing hardware platforms every few years. This, in turn, will help meet the rapid growth of user demands and the need for multi-device integration.

The next product I wanna highlight is the ECARX Makalu, our next-generation immersive, intelligent cockpit computing platform. We consider Makalu to be one of the most powerful platforms within the smart cockpit market. It comes equipped with the AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 processor and Radeon RX 6000 Series GPU. With a powerful performance of 394 K DMIPS and graphic rendering capability of 10.1 TFLOPS. Makalu supports up to 32 gigabit standalone memory and a groundbreaking 8 gigabit of standalone VRAM. This platform can deliver desktop-level performance and supports the latest graphics processing interfaces of PC platforms, ideal for gaming, real-time 3D environment rendering, and surrounding spatial audio effects. We are excited to introduce this offering to our customers. We are currently planning for mass production rollout in 2024.

Following ECARX Makalu is the SuperBrain central computing platform, which combines our SE1000 with advanced AD chipset, bringing AI performance to its full potential. This is our all-in-one solution that we view as a supercomputing controller that integrates the cockpit, driving, and vehicle control with our full stack hardware and software technologies. The SuperBrain will lead to improvements in performance and efficiency of the EV architecture and drive the evolution from intelligent EVs to intelligent mobile devices. SuperBrain will also allow OEMs to reduce the wiring harnesses in the entire vehicle by 5%, cut vehicle engineering costs by 15%, and bring 20% material savings when compared to distributed controllers. Last is ECARX Cloudpeak software, which is the cross-domain system capability foundation built by our global R&D teams in collaboration with HALEYTEK, the joint venture between ECARX and Volvo.

The systems architecture is built to fully meet the functional safety and information security requirements of vehicles, supporting multiple operating systems and the global mobility ecosystem. It meets both national and international standards and is compliant with the EAL4 security certification. From a partnership perspective, we are excited about our latest collaborations with Unreal Engine, which you mentioned earlier, and Xingji Meizu Group , which was discussed at our Tech Day to create immersive user experiences through desktop-level 3D visual effects, and to jointly develop Flyme Auto intelligent cockpit solutions respectively. We are proud to debut Antora 1000 Pro and Flyme Auto in the Lynk & Co 08 model, showcasing the power and potential of our innovative products. This exclusive partnership gives ECARX unique access to Flyme Auto for in-car use and builds on ECARX's existing OS development, enabling a global Android product offer.

Looking ahead, we are building ECARX to become a leader in a large and growing EV market that is undergoing transformational change. We continue to invest in our people and in R&D to create innovative products and services that meet the evolving needs of our customers. I encourage all of you to join us at our upcoming Investor Day on May ninth to get a better understanding of our vision and to get experience with our products and tech firsthand. I will now turn it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Ramesh, who will share more about our financial results and outlook. Ramesh, over to you.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Thanks, Peter. I'm delighted to be presenting our first results as a public company. Over the past year, ECARX has demonstrated strong financial performance. Our revenues increased significantly, driven by strong demand for our products and services. We have improved our profit margins through a focus on sourcing, manufacturing efficiency, and cost reduction, and remain on track to reach Adjusted EBITDA profitability by the end of 2024. To provide a better view of the underlying performance of the business, I will be referring to our growth rates on a constant currency basis. Our revenue for the fourth quarter of 2022 was $221 million, up 44% year-over-year, driven by sales of goods revenues, which increased 43% when compared to last year, primarily due to the higher average sales prices and higher volumes from the launch of new products.

Our software license revenues grew by a strong 263% year-over-year, driven by increased volume and favorable pricing. While service revenues saw a year-over-year decline of 10% in the fourth quarter, primarily due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on our customers' operations, which resulted in delays to certain projects. For full year 2022, our service revenues grew 35% year-over-year due to increased demand for technical consulting services from OEM customers and Tier one partners. Of note, the fourth quarter is seasonally our highest quarter of the year, contributing to around 40% of the top line, while first quarter is the lowest at around 15-20%. Our gross profit for the fourth quarter of 2022 was $62 million, up 30% year-over-year, primarily driven by the launch of new products and favorable product mix.

For full year 2022, our gross profit was $144 million, up 21% year-over-year. Our Adjusted EBITDA loss for the fourth quarter of 2022 was $30 million, primarily driven by strong demand from our OEM and Tier 1 customers and pricing recoveries, slightly offset by inflationary headwinds. For full year 2022, our Adjusted EBITDA loss was $100 million, bettering our planned estimates by $62 million and 15% better when compared to the prior year. This improvement was mainly driven by proactively optimizing and reducing our operating costs while also leveraging the higher absolute gross margin from our top line. Net loss for the fourth quarter increased to $107 million, up from $37 million in the same period last year, largely driven by higher R&D and SBC charges as we continue to invest in and execute our robust product roadmap.

For full year 2022, our net loss was $224 million, up from $177 million in 2021. As of December 31, 2022, we had $113 million in cash, a decrease of $18 million over the year, primarily due to investments in R&D to support the launch of new products. Our capital position remains strong and will enable continued investment in innovation and strategic partnerships to drive growth in the future. We have optimized our supply chain and production processes, which have resulted in lower costs and higher profitability. We maintain a strong balance sheet with healthy liquidity and a manageable debt load, which have allowed us to continue investing in our business and our pipeline in a very focused and a disciplined way.

Of course, an important part of this has been our efforts to continue building our international capabilities that are essential to our continued success. Looking ahead, ECARX will continue to focus on efficiency and cost control while also investing in our business to drive growth and innovation. We will continue to prioritize sustainable and responsible business practices, which will contribute to our long-term success. We also plan to expand our reach into new markets, both domestic and international, which we believe will drive growth and profitability. Moving now to guidance. We look forward to sharing more detail during our upcoming Investor Day on May 9th, where we will outline our five-year financial objectives and strategy.

For now, speaking for 2023 and taking into account the current exchange rate between the US dollar and renminbi, we are guiding for revenue to be in the range of $700 million-720 million, a 38% year-over-year increase at the midpoint. For Adjusted EBITDA, we maintain our guidance of achieving breakeven by the end of 2024. With that, we would like to open up for questions.

Operator

Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click submit. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We will now go to our first question. One moment, please. Your first question comes from the line of Yuqian Ding from HSBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yuqian Ding
Equity Research Analyst, HSBC

Thank you. Thank you, team. This is Yu- Chien from HSBC. Thanks for management for the presentation. Very informative. I've got three questions if we may rolling one by one. The first one is, Tesla recently talked about a significant profit opportunity via its autonomy progress, while by keeping their vehicle margins lower for more volume elasticity. The implication could be how would the management team view the industry dynamics, especially between increasing OEMs might want to enhance their vertical integration software capabilities to harvest the more autonomy margin in the future like Tesla, or the OEM would procure the intelligent or connectivity content from independent supplier like us. How do we position ourselves against the OEM's bifurcation between vertical integration and the other can procure from the suppliers like us?

I might ask the following questions after your answer, if that's okay.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

A great question. Thank you for that. That was the first question is always hard. I'll hand over to Ziyu Shen to answer you.

Zhu Shen
Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO, ECARX

This is Ziyu speaking. Thanks for the question. I think regarding the question, the vertical integration by OEM and there are other, like, the platform from third party. I want to explain that we needed to define what meaning of the vertical integration because like Tesla, of course, that's a vertical integration because they in-house the SoC like FSD and all software by themselves. But in the world, only Tesla, one OEM is doing that like that. They're doing this kind of model. Other most of OEM are using Qualcomm or NVIDIA platform. Actually we are doing the similar things. We in-house our entrance platform with SiEngine SoC and platform, and provide the shared platform to all OEMs right now. That's my understanding about the vertical integration of our position.

Actually our main competitor, actually the similar like Qualcomm and NVIDIA are doing, that we are providing the SoC base, the computing platform. Our Antora and Antora 1000 core, that including SiEngine SoC, very similar like that. I'm not sure if answer your question or not. Maybe Peter, you can add some comments.

Yuqian Ding
Equity Research Analyst, HSBC

Yeah. Sure. Thank you. That's very clear. Yeah.

Zhu Shen
Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO, ECARX

Okay.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Thank you.

Yuqian Ding
Equity Research Analyst, HSBC

Yeah. If, if we may roll in another question?

Zhu Shen
Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO, ECARX

Yeah, sure. Sure.

Yuqian Ding
Equity Research Analyst, HSBC

The second question is, Yeah, that'll be great. Thank you. The second question is to ask you about your perspective on the margin outlook, especially in China. The first quarter seems our end customers are going through severe pricing competition. Are we facing the potential margin squeeze coming from our OEM customers? If any other initiatives that we can do, such as providing them higher value addition content to buffer the potential margin squeeze? Could you share a bit more light on that front?

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks again for the question. This is Ramesh here. I think for us, what we are seeing is a significant growth in our revenue, and we are seeing, you know, our ability to maintain strong margins going forward. That's on the basis of the fact that we have, you know, as we referred in our tech day, a number of products that we announced. I think the key is that the products are enabling a very strong customer digital experience, which is helping us to maintain the margins and at the same time be competitive.

I think, you know, we are pretty positive and optimistic about the long-term growth of company and the profitability of ECARX.

Yuqian Ding
Equity Research Analyst, HSBC

Got it. Thank you. The last one, could you walk us through about your cash burn rate guidance before breakeven in the coming two years? Obviously, we've maintained our EBITDA breakeven point by the end of 2024. Within this year and next year and also 2024, what's the rough the estimate of the cash burn rate on the fixed costs specifically, such as R&D and SG&A? During the meantime, if any additional equity or debt raising we might need it to before we achieve self-sustaining level.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Yeah. I mean, let me start with firstly our cash position, you know, as of December. We ended up with $130 million in cash. You know, it's as we said in the recording, in the messaging that we, you know, our cash decreased by about $18 million over the year. Mainly we continue to invest in R&D and support the new products. We are pretty comfortable with our current cash position. You know, we are capital light in terms of our structure. We outsource our manufacturing. Primarily, our cash balance as part of this year is sufficient to support us for 2023.

We are of course, you know, with the growth, there will be some demands on cash, and we will evaluate opportunities to see if we need to raise some funding in future, to help us to grow further and also to continue to invest in R&D.

Yuqian Ding
Equity Research Analyst, HSBC

Got it very clear. That's all for me. Thank you, team.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We will now go to our next question. One moment please. The next question comes the line of George Gianarikas from Canaccord. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

George Gianarikas
Managing Director and Senior Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I was wondering if you can go into more detail about early interest in Makalu platform, any, you know, details on the OEMs and the use cases? Thank you.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Hey, George. Thanks for the question. This is Peter. Just to give an, I mean, update on that product, we're super excited about the use case in the vehicle. The Makalu product brings both in-vehicle gaming as well as a deep on-vehicle 3D experience for the operating system. We think that will provide, you know, great differentiation for the digital cockpit inside the vehicle. We announced that the Smart brand will be using that product on future launches. We're continuing to have conversations with other OEMs as well, both, you know, both inside of China and inside of Europe.

We expect that product will be probably on vehicle by the end of this year and then continue to adopt across additional OEMs in the market.

George Gianarikas
Managing Director and Senior Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

All right. Is there any way you can help us understand the P&L impact of that product as it starts to ramp?

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Let me just understand your question. You would like to know what the impact of Makalu is on our revenue?

George Gianarikas
Managing Director and Senior Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Revenue, like ASP differences between Antora and Makalu. Any sort of P&L impact you can help us quantify. Thank you.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

I think the Makalu impact will be more from, you know, end of this year. I think it's a little bit early to talk about the ASP impact on our P&L for 2023.

George Gianarikas
Managing Director and Senior Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Right. As it begins to ramp next year, can you just help with, like, early indications of what the difference is in ASP will be or have you not kind of gone to that much detail with your customers yet?

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

No, not yet. I think it's a little bit early to discuss that. Yeah.

George Gianarikas
Managing Director and Senior Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Okay. On the SuperBrain, you talk about 20% BOM cost savings. You mentioned a little bit about wire harnesses. Any other... Can you help us understand a little bit more about what BOM savings there are and how that's a potential marketing to customers in terms of just the ASP difference between the SuperBrain and the BOM cost? Thank you.

Zhu Shen
Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO, ECARX

Okay. This is Ziyu speaking. Let me answer your question. The Super Brain, actually, that's we are bringing cockpit domain and ADAS domain put together 1 box. From hardware perspective, we are saving a lot, you know, mechanical, PCB and connector. Obviously that's the cheaper BOM cost comparing 2 different boxes for the 2 different domains. Also, from vehicle E/E architecture point of view, we are offering Super Brain. We can also saving a lot of connection and communication cabling and complicated, you know, software protocol, et cetera, et cetera. We can let E/E architecture of vehicle provide much easier than before old architecture. Yeah. That's the overall the BOM cost saving point of view.

George Gianarikas
Managing Director and Senior Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Great. Thank you. Maybe a final question that was asked by the earlier analyst about just the weakness in the Chinese EV market and the impact on pricing. I'm just curious as to whether you can share any real-time thoughts on the market and what you see happening, and just so you can maybe illuminate for us a little bit of real-time impact that the market is having on your business. Thank you.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Yeah. I think overall, While there might be some softening, we're actually seeing substantial growth. As you saw, you know, year-over-year, we have grown substantially, and this year we are forecasting a further 38% increase in revenue. Currently we are not seeing the impact yet. We certainly, with our new products, we are seeing higher demand and we are optimistic about the growth opportunities for ECARX both in China and also outside.

George Gianarikas
Managing Director and Senior Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We will now go to our next question. One moment please. The next question comes from the line of Jarett Majid from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Jarrod Majid
Managing Director, Berenberg

Hey, guys. Morning. Thanks for taking the question, and congrats on the first call as a public company. Obviously, pretty exciting. First question from me, just on the partnership that you guys recently announced with Meizu on the Flyme Auto platform. It sounds like that platform's gonna be pretty powerful compared to what exists on the market right now, at least looking at the current state of those offerings. I guess I'm curious if you expect that platform to be standardized across other Geely ecosystem brands or models, and can you speak to how that opportunity might impact licenses or services revenues versus goods sold?

Peter Cirino
COO, ECARX

Hey, Jarett, it's Peter. Thank you for the question. Good to hear from you. We, as you know, debuted that platform right around the Shanghai Auto Show on the Lynk & Co 08. We had it in our booth as well at the Shanghai Auto Show and got some really great feedback from existing and future potential customers. You know, it has the capability of bringing the smartphone experience, you know, very close to the automobile and digital cockpit and making that the seamless integration between cell phone and vehicles, you know, start to come to life. We're pretty excited about, you know, as we continue to work closely with Meizu on launching future vehicles and bring that platform into the vehicle and into users' hands.

I think we'll see a significant continued tailwind from that platform.

Jarrod Majid
Managing Director, Berenberg

Great to hear. Just clarifying on that partnership. You guys said that was an exclusive strategic partnership. Can you just explain what that means in the context of that relationship?

Peter Cirino
COO, ECARX

Yeah, sure. I mean, we work very closely with Meizu on integrating, you know, their software into our software stack and bringing it into the vehicle experience. You know, we're an exclusive partner with Meizu on the Flyme Auto system in order to, you know, take that from their software development stack into the vehicle experience. We work closely with the OEMs and build the system out accordingly.

Jarrod Majid
Managing Director, Berenberg

Got it. Okay. One, one on the kind of the model here. It looks like EBITDA loss came in a little bit lower than expected. That's obviously great to see. Just kinda curious what the dynamics were there. I guess how that kind of panned out. Was that the result at all of kind of pushing any cost to manage the cash position and any implications on what the 2023 loss might look like as a result of that?

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Yeah. Hi, Jared. Ramesh here. Let me just break down your questions too. For FY 22, basically our EBITDA performance was stronger by us focusing on our fixed cost on a very proactive basis, right? I think we also mentioned that we focused on operational efficiencies and making sure that, you know, while we are maintaining or improving the margin or the quality of revenue, we have a very strong eye on the cost discipline. In terms of, you know, our EBITDA objective, we are committed and, you know, strongly confident about the 2024. I think for us, what is important is that we focus on a sustainable, profitable growth.

That's what we are focused on, right? We're not giving a guidance on 2023 EBITDA because for us, what is important is to ensure that we achieve our 2024 commitments that we have made, previously. As I mentioned, that we are very confident about achieving those milestones.

Jarrod Majid
Managing Director, Berenberg

Yep. Yeah, definitely. Totally got it. Great to hear that you guys are still committed to that. Last question for me, and then I'll let somebody else jump in. Just kind of a more broad industry question. Some of the silicon and platform providers, I think especially in ADAS, have established pretty, you know, fairly recently, some really strong partnerships with OEMs that includes some software sharing revenue. I'm just looking at the Meizu partnership, for example, and some of the other ones that you guys have. Curious if you could talk to kind of what the opportunities look like there as far as your own kind of software recurring revenues goes and what the conversations with customers have been like.

Peter Cirino
COO, ECARX

Jared. I mean, I think the, you know, the customer, the customer reaction to the Meizu platforms, we think is really exciting. I think the Flyme Auto system will enable capabilities inside the vehicles that, you know, that really bring, as I said, the cell phone experience into the car in a very unique way. You know, we're certainly able, I think, through that partnership, to help the OEMs build out their capability to generate reoccurring revenues inside the vehicle. I think we continue to explore, you know, unique pricing models, especially as we look for future systems and bring some of these very high horsepower systems into the vehicle. I think we'll continue to look for those opportunities as we go forward in the future.

Jarrod Majid
Managing Director, Berenberg

Sounds great. Thanks, guys, and, I'll see you on the ninth.

Peter Cirino
COO, ECARX

Great. Look forward to it.

Jarrod Majid
Managing Director, Berenberg

Thanks, Jared.

Peter Cirino
COO, ECARX

Thanks, Jared.

Operator

Thank you. We will now go to your next question. One moment, please. Your next question comes to the line of Suji Desilva from ROTH Capital. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Suji Desilva
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Roth Capital

Hi. Suji, Peter, Ramesh. Congratulations on the strong 2022 and the outlook as well. You know, you guys talked about this in Q&A a little bit, but just, you know, as you compete with guys like NVIDIA and Qualcomm, who are traditionally from the smartphone space, can you talk about ECARX's advantages coming to that, perhaps the strong auto relationships and things of that nature? Thanks.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Suji, just to clarify your question. Well, good to hear from you again. Just to clarify your question, you want to know how do we compete with NVIDIA, Qualcomm?

Suji Desilva
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Roth Capital

Correct. The competitive advantages you bring versus them.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Competitive advantages that we have.

Suji Desilva
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Roth Capital

From the PC smartphone side. Yep. Thanks.

Zhu Shen
Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO, ECARX

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. This is Ziyu speaking. Okay. Because our core DNA, they're from automotive R&D, we know the vehicle E/E architecture quite well. We, our team actually already finished a lot of, you know, vehicle program, and we know vehicle feature and system are much better than the other competitors. That's why we can vertical integration and including SoC design, and very dedicated for automotive requirements. Especially I introduced before from our SiEngine SoC, we have physical safety island and the functional safety vertical integration. Et cetera example to provide a very valuable, you know, feature to system design and OEM R&D to reduce the cost and improve the performance.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

At day one, when we design system, that we focus on automotive design. That's very unique. That's unique for our part, actually, from the competitors.

Zhu Shen
Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO, ECARX

All right. Thank you, Ziyu. That was very helpful. Perhaps on the revenue guidance, curious your visibility into that guide and customer diversification there as you broaden your customer base. I'm curious how much visibility you have into the forward guides and then, you know, how the customer base will be diversifying with new programs and new customers ramping.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Yeah. Suji, hi, Ramesh here again. In terms of visibility, as you know, automotive is normally 18-24 months at least in terms of contracts. Therefore, we're very confident about the revenue guidance. Of course, it is subject to macroeconomic impacts that might happen, but that is, you know, due to economic challenges that might come across. You know, we're very confident given our visibility that we have in terms of the 2023 guidance. In terms of revenue diversification, I think the revenue base will start diversifying more as the new products come along. We are seeing the demand from different customers.

We announced the FAW strategic partnership, you know, a couple of months ago. Those will diversify our revenue base very soon with the new products. We have established the international business office based out of UK. We are in a number of conversations overseas. While that will take a little bit of time, we're also confident that in the long run, that our revenue will diversify, not just, you know, from a customer base perspective, but also from a geographical base perspective as well.

Suji Desilva
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Roth Capital

Okay. If I could sneak one last quick one in. I know you were hesitant to talk about pricing yet. Can you talk about perhaps the content opportunity per car as a way to kind of size the addressable market for you guys?

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

I mean, well, I'll talk about content per car today. Today our content per car is about. I'll give a range. This does not include some, you know, services that we provide, like engineering services or software services. Our content per car is around $360-380 per car. That's, you know, typically, what we have in a vehicle.

Peter Cirino
COO, ECARX

Suji, just to add to Ramesh's comment, I think as we, you know, continue to develop some of these advanced platforms like the Makalu program, we talked about the SuperBrain, I think that's got, you know, those complicated systems have the potential to, you know, to raise that number as we go through the life cycles.

Suji Desilva
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Roth Capital

Okay, great. Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Ramesh. Thanks again, guys.

Peter Cirino
COO, ECARX

All right. Thanks, Suji.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Thanks, Suji.

Peter Cirino
COO, ECARX

See you.

Operator

Thank you. We will now go to the next question. One moment please. Your next question comes from the line of Wenzhen Ding from CICC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Wenzhen Ding
Senior Analyst, CICC

Hi, this is Wenzhen from CICC. Can you hear me?

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Yes. Hello. Hello.

Wenzhen Ding
Senior Analyst, CICC

Okay. Hi. Hi. Hi. Yeah, I just got on the phone and might have missed the previous communication. I have three questions. The first one is, what are the target markets for SE1000 and AMD V2000 platforms? Are there any segmentation among those two? This is the first question.

Zhu Shen
Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO, ECARX

Okay. This is Ziyu speaking, so let me answer your first question. SE1000 SoC, that's SiEngine SoC, and we do the Antora Series products. Actually, this one actually talking about, of course, the global market. Because the SE1000 already had the automotive-grade certification and functional safety certificate. Also, we have the global IP protection on that. That's why we are aiming to the global, yes, for global market, of course. V2000 from AMD, of course, that's also we collaborate with AMD at very strategic on automotive-grade area. Of course, we are targeting the pre-premium, the luxury brand and high-end product EV market, also the global market as well. Yeah.

Wenzhen Ding
Senior Analyst, CICC

Okay.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Hello?

Wenzhen Ding
Senior Analyst, CICC

Make very clear. Thank you.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Yeah.

Wenzhen Ding
Senior Analyst, CICC

Yeah, yeah. I have the second question. Which platform, which computing platform will be the main platform promoted overseas? This is the second question.

Peter Cirino
COO, ECARX

Yeah. I'll grab that. Great question. You know, as we're talking to potential customers for expansion in Europe, we are talking with them about both potential platforms. I think the Antora platform will be in the higher volume, you know, center of the market. It provides a great performance value equation for our potential customers. We can see, I think, some very high volume discussions that we're having on that platform. As Ziyu mentioned, Makalu platform is higher performance, and we are discussing primarily with the premium EV suppliers or EV customers for that product line. I think the discussions that Ziyu was mentioning greatly applies to the global market as well.

Wenzhen Ding
Senior Analyst, CICC

Oh, okay, thanks. The third one is about financial performance. I agreed that Wave gave the guidance for 2023, but can you break up the income compensation for us?

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Yeah. We gave a guidance in terms of 2023, that we will be between $700 million-720 million, and that represents a 38% year-over-year growth. You know, somebody else, I do not know if you heard that question, but somebody was asking earlier, you know, what is the level of visibility we have. Given the automotive nature, we have very good visibility in terms of 2023, and we are very confident that we will get to those guidance.

Wenzhen Ding
Senior Analyst, CICC

Okay. That's all for my questions. Thank you very much.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone. Once again, star one and one if you would like to ask a question. There are currently no further questions. I will hand the call back for closing.

Ramesh Narasimhan
CFO, ECARX

All right. Thank you, Sharon. I would like to thank, you know, all of you for taking time, in joining this exciting first earnings call. I really appreciate all the very good questions to us. Thank you. We look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks in New York, where we will share, you know, our long-term vision and strategy. Thank you.

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