Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us at this Investor Summit Group webcast. I'd like to introduce CEO of MicroVision, Sumit Sharma, and the CFO of MicroVision, Anubhav Verma. We will get right to the Q&A, so please enter your questions in the Q&A box, and we will begin. Okay. We have one here. Any update on the highway pilot feature track testing on MicroVision's LIDAR technologies in Q2 of 2022 in the U.S. and Germany?
I think we continue on the path of testing. Most recently we did some testing in our test site in Michigan, and it continues on track. I think we're looking forward to presenting the data more publicly after the June testing is complete. Which is some specific features that we wanna make sure that we complete for OEM review ahead of schedule. Yeah, things are going as planned and it's looking pretty good.
Great. What specs are most important to OEMs and tier ones? How does MicroVision differentiate from the competition on those specs, and how should investors evaluate that?
I think, so there's two things to talk about when we talk about tier one or OEM. The activity is all driven by OEM consistently. OEMs are very, very involved directly. They expect tier ones eventually to step in and provide the parts to them, you know, when it goes to production. The OEMs are hands-on on these things, on the features. There's two aspects to what's very important for this product. Number one, of course, is the hardware, and I'll cover that in the specifications. The number two item that I've talked about a little bit, and I'm gonna elaborate a little bit more on today, is the software. As far as the hardware is concerned, cost is number one.
They really wanna see that even though they have the technology, is there a path to be commercially viable? That's number one, let's be honest. Number two, the size of the device is actually very important. 100% of the meetings that we've had so far, and we've had all the top tier OEMs I'm talking about. They're looking at sizes that are significantly lower, and more in line with where our size is, the size of the device. They need to fit it inside the body of the car. They cannot have the grill or the headlight shape change. The ideal place to put it is actually behind the windshield, inside the vehicle. It has to be quiet and very, very small and low power.
The actual specifications that are very important to OEMs is resolution at range, meaning that they have a high enough density point cloud, not just near the car, but all the way out to a couple of hundred meters of targets of small pieces of tire, perhaps. To do highway pilot systems, high speed highway pilot systems, that's what's required. You need range, you need high resolution, and you need low latency, so you can plan and maneuver around these obstacles. Beyond that, the next piece that's actually very important to them is velocity. Understanding what the velocity of objects in the scene are at any given time, and even in every frame, is very, very important. That's on the hardware side.
There's a bunch of other specifications underneath it, but those are the big main hitters that are always, you know, you have to meet it. In every conversation, again, they always talk about what is your perception software solution? They're expecting that the LIDAR companies are gonna be software companies as well, and they're gonna provide a perception software solution. This is where we're truly differentiated and we really get, you know, great marks. The software that we provide, what we give them is drivable, not drivable space, as I've mentioned before. This is the most simplest form of perception. But it's very complicated, right? We've taken a complex problem, broken it down, and we have it inside our ASIC, eventually when we launch the ASIC, but in FPGA right now.
The perception software is important and of course the hardware is important. The other layers of software for classification, that stays on their side. Those are two areas I would say are very important to OEMs that we consistently get asked about.
Okay. I have a few more questions then. What specs have OEMs conveyed to you that MicroVision solves for, that the competition does not? How does the company's custom ASIC for automotive LIDAR benefit OEMs and differentiate MicroVision?
Okay. I can't really talk about specific specifications. What I can tell you is all the RFIs we've done, they always have a chart of the specifications that they need. As I've said before, in every RFI we've done, we meet and exceed their expectations. No feedback has come back that, you know, there's a hardware feature that's required or a software feature that's required. I think I've been pretty consistent about that. Yeah, every RFI, no surprises so far. As far as the strategy we have of everything in our ASIC, you know, putting it in our ASIC is effectively the higher end of the problem set. If you think about from a silicon standpoint, you've taken the problem and you've solved it down to the basic mathematics, and it's a very, very reliable, low cost solution.
It's got a significant advantage to them because everything is low cost to begin with. It's also gonna have incredible amount of IP baked into the individual digital ASIC that can last for a very long period of time. It's low power, and it is in the LIDAR. This does not require you know, complicated architectures or architecture changes on their side. You know, we give them a fully baked solution in our LIDAR that is gonna do perception directly from the chip.
Okay. Why the near term focus on ADAS levels two and three markets? Will MicroVision pursue level four market?
That's a very good question actually. Actually somebody yesterday I was asked the same question. I'll give a more elaborate answer here. Level four and level five are years out. The volumes that we see in that space
Is in the tens of thousands, and that's, you know, still stretching it. I think it's an important space to have our sensor, MOVIA S ready for sale. We don't expect huge amounts of revenue from that segment of the market because it is still developing, you know, for us as drivers to give up control of our vehicles. I think that's, you know, there's a seismic shift in society that would have to happen. Yeah, of course, our technology can support that. Our focus on level three and level two plus and level two is because the majority of the volume of the 87-100 million vehicles that are produced every year are gonna start transitioning to that. The market segment where the most volume is for our hardware and software remains the ADAS space.
Therefore we are choosing to focus on that because that's where revenue will be coming from. Yeah, of course, we can support companies that are working on level four.
Okay, great. Other LIDAR companies have signed partnership agreements with auto OEMs and MicroVision has not. Is that a concern?
Let's just put it in context. I think, like, I would like people to think about the problem, the question they're stating, you know, slightly differently. There's companies that have announced those partnerships. They've not announced when their start of production is. While they were in the middle of partnerships and the product they said that they had a lot to deal with, within two years, they launched a second product. Anybody that's in automotive will tell you, if you actually say to a OEM, "Here's my product, that's gonna go to start of production," it takes three years to qualify just that product. Therefore, how certain are those deals if these companies are changing their product offerings to the market?
I think there's announcements there, and I think I respect every opponent, and I think that, you know, it's great that competitors have these deals. We certainly work very hard to get those deals, but we've done deals with Microsoft, Sony and others in the past, so we know a little bit about it. It's very important to build the right product at the right price point with the right features and maintain your IP, because ultimately that's the value to the investors. I'm not so worried about it because I've actually personally had, you know, meetings with OEMs, you know, completely point-blank asked the question, "How should I think about this? How should I think about the business?" you know, the very direct answer is, "You would not be here if you thought for a second that the problem was solved.
We're looking at solving a much bigger scaling problem. Your specs, your size, your cost, you know, the market is still open. I'm pretty confident that, as we go forward and the RFQs for the next round, for the big production rounds are starting, we're in the middle of it, and I think we are just in time.
Great. You provided guidance on cumulative revenue through 2030 of $2 billion-$4 billion and cumulative EBITDA of $1 billion-$2 billion. What are your assumptions in that guidance?
Yeah, I'll take that. I think as Sumit described, our focus is on the L2+ and L3 markets. You know, the cumulative revenue of $2 billion-$4 billion is directly a consequence of targeting this market. I think this is sort of what we wanted to make sure that the cumulative revenue is only focused on the L2+ and L3 markets that we know as of today. This revenue figure is based on the number of vehicles that are gonna be produced having these features all the way until 2030.
The single biggest assumption in driving that $80 billion cumulative revenue opportunity for the entire market is based on the fact assumption that L3 vehicles will have two LIDARs, while L2+ will have one LIDAR box with the entire perception in the cars. If we come to the next biggest assumption is we have to assume that the biggest market for the $80 billion dollar market is gonna have an ASP or average selling price of $800 to get to the $80 billion cumulative number that we have presented in our investor presentations. Our number of $2 billion-$4 billion revenue is a conservative estimate, where the ASP is assumed to be $500 from an estimate standpoint.
Now, this is very important because, you know, this is essentially the fact that hardware tends to get commoditized. So while the ASPs will start out a bit on the higher side, they will come down eventually as the product gets more commercially adopted by the OEMs. So now going back to our $2 billion-$4 billion number of cumulative revenue, the next biggest assumption is MicroVision's LIDAR will gradually have market share starting from 15%-40% by the end of 2030. This will essentially start with the fact that, you know, we will be able to have at least two OEM partnerships by the time 2024, 2025 production starts. This is where it's very important to understand this revenue stream will be broken down into two pieces, as Sumit described.
The hardware and the software. Hardware revenue streams would be on a gross profit sharing basis. What that means is the OEMs essentially need to have a tier one, which is right now supplying the broader ADAS solution of which LIDAR will be a part of that ADAS solution, and hence ultimately tier one would be our customer, which will be ultimately providing the end product to the OEM. Now, we believe that the hardware stream is gonna be approximately 1/4 or 25% of the total revenue stream. This would be approximately on a gross profit, 50% gross profit sharing arrangement with the tier ones.
Now, at the ASP of $500, we have estimated that the gross profit would be approximately 10%, and it would be shared 10%-15%, and it would be shared equally between the tier one and MicroVision in this framework. The biggest component of the revenue stream is gonna be the software, which essentially will be the brains behind the hardware. I think as Sumit described, the custom ASIC essentially contains the code that not only drives the hardware but also processes the point cloud to ultimately come up with drivable free space clusters for the OEM's main domain controller that our software would be connecting to from a connection standpoint.
This is where, which is the IP, and I think as Sumit described, the perception is what we will command the pricing of MicroVision's lidar. We expect this number to be 15%-25% of the ASP for every lidar box that is gonna be shipped by the tier one to the OEM, which is ultimately gonna be installed in the vehicle or in the production fleet at the OEM. Now, these two essentially are the biggest streams that will constitute the revenue, the cumulative revenue estimates that we believe are gonna be between $2 billion-$4 billion until 2030. Now let's go back to the EBITDA. EBITDA is essentially a direct, you know, translation of this revenue straight to the bottom line.
The reason being is because as you can imagine from our go-to-market strategy, MicroVision is estimating the tier one to take on the production for the LIDAR sensors. Hence, our gross margins essentially would be the cost of revenue would essentially be the engineers and the resources that we would need to bring on board to scale the software development for the production. Ultimately, that's sort of what will translate into a very high contribution margin, which will drop straight to the bottom line as EBITDA from a contribution standpoint. That's sort of how we come to $1 billion-$2 billion of EBITDA. Now, obviously, there would be some expenses related to marketing. Obviously, as the team grows and expands, we would have some SG&A expenses.
Ultimately, the high contribution margin will reflect or mimic what a software company typically has in terms of scaling the business from an engineering resource standpoint.
Great. Thank you for that. What is anticipated cash use in 2022 and 2023, and how should investors think about the ATM?
Yeah, we ended last year, 2021, with about a $115 million cash balance. Our cash burn was around $30 million on an annual basis. Now, 2022 would be higher than 2021, obviously, because some of the investments that we have been making in the engineering resources and the R&D and the engineering team, and essentially, you know, some of the infrastructure that we have grown or built to match with the increasing number of engineering resources, which are essential for scaling the business to essentially meet the OEM demands and specs that I, Sumit talked about. 2022 will have some higher expenses than we expect 2023 would to be.
Again, you know, we haven't provided guidance for 2023, but we expect that 2023 would be slightly higher than 2022 as well as the business scales from a headcount standpoint, and also the conversations that we continue to have with the OEMs across the board. The ATM program is supposed to be as a tool or what we think of it as a flexibility that we have as compared to some of our competition who have raised quite a bit of capital through the SPAC IPOs that they have gone through. Now, we have been very judicious about the ATM program, and we would use it as and when necessary to supplement the balance sheet with capital.
Like I said, you know, just to give you a few data points, our cash balance was $115 million. Cash burn was around $30 million. We feel comfortable as compared to some of our peers whose cash burn is four-five times than us just from an operation standpoint. Given, you know, obviously where the OEMs are in their life cycle, we believe that we are very comfortable and well-positioned in terms of, you know, what our cash burn is as compared to some of our peers, and also relative to the balance sheet strengths that we have at this point in time.
Great. Thank you. Do you anticipate any supply chain issues in the near future that may impact your timeline? What countries will be involved in your sourcing?
At this point, we do not anticipate any supply chain issues because we are not sourcing any parts from Ukraine or Russia at this point in time. We feel pretty good about where the things stand today. Obviously, you know, the world is unpredictable and we continue to watch the macroeconomic conditions. At this point, from a supply chain standpoint, we do not have any dependencies from the affected region of the world.
Okay. What is the goal of MicroVision's participation in investor conferences? This seems like a new approach compared to recent years.
Yeah. I think our approach has been in the past 6 months to sort of get on the radar of investors because I think it's very important that people understand the story and where MicroVision is from a specs standpoint. Because I think our efforts have been focused on investor outreach to demonstrate how the product is much superior than some of the competitors' products. This especially because of the fact that the IP that the company has with about over 430 patents in the laser technology. Essentially the fact that this company has been around for over two decades with relationships like Sony, Microsoft in the past.
I think our goal has been to get in front of the investors to obviously tell our story of where what our history is and where we are headed from a future standpoint. Obviously the specs and most importantly the software is what gives us the edge to compete with the peers. I think that's sort of why our focus has been to participate in as many investor conferences as we can to get the story out there to the investors.
I'd like to add something on that one. We clearly spend a lot of our time focusing on OEMs and tier ones and our products and developing our technology. We spend quite a lot of time, of course, you know, we have a very large retail shareholder base. You know, we communicate as often to the market as possible. I see these as opportunities. You know, we are a public company, so it is important for our public company persona to be consistent with what we are actually doing within the company to build value. I see these as a great opportunity to just reach out with all investors, retail and institutional, and make sure that the story that we have, the company story is actually well understood. You know, you're looking at a high-tech, high-growth company.
High-tech, high-growth companies are working on things that will have significant revenue opportunities in the near future. We want to just make sure that everybody understands that, you know, what are we doing and what the value could be as we look forward to the future.
Okay. We are actually almost out of time. Do you have any other remarks that you'd like to share with us?
No, I think that covers it all. I think it's like, you know, what's very important for people to understand. I think one question I see in the chat here is, like, what is one thing that retail institutional investors should keep in mind? I wanna address that. I like that question actually in general. I think there is lots of part of the story. I think like you can see Anubhav and I always talk about certain key elements over and over again that are very important. But in a nutshell, step back and take a look at the bigger picture. You think about the size of the market we're talking about. OEMs are openly saying that the whole size of markets are not hyperbole. Those are real, what they're focusing on.
On top of that is who is gonna solve that problem and what the value is. Software, for the first time, is not the way you think about it. It is not running on a domain controller. It has to be something inside the LIDAR. You have to have real IP in hardware and real IP in software that will enable you, and you will have something that is very magical in that sense. I think that what people have to focus in a nutshell is look at the market size, look at the opportunity that's there, you look at the differentiated companies, and very quickly start sifting out of who will be there in the future. Of course, we believe that we're gonna be the leader there.
Great. Thank you. Okay. I think this concludes our webcast for the day. I know that seems like it was just a short time. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks everyone for being a part of this webcast, and we will see you next time.