All right. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are here for a fireside chat with the management team of MicroVision, symbol MVIS. Now, as many of you are aware, MicroVision is a high-tech software and hardware LiDAR company that is currently focusing on developing LiDAR sensors for level two and level three autonomous vehicles. We are here today with Sumit Sharma, CEO, and Anubhav Verma, CFO. Before we get started, I just wanna remind any investors on the call today that if you have any questions that you'd like to ask, please either email me those to me directly or ping me on Bloomberg, and we'll be happy to ask those on your behalf. With that, we are ready to get started. Good afternoon, Sumit. Good afternoon, Anubhav.
Good afternoon.
Hi, Andres.
Thank you again. Thank you for joining us today. Maybe to get started, you know, Sumit, I know you've spent a lot of time in Europe over the last few weeks, and you've had several great meetings out there. Maybe to kick off, maybe you can just give us some of the feedback you've gotten from some of those meetings.
Yeah. I think I've spent actually quite a lot of time in this quarter, actually, in Germany. I think the feedback in general, you know, our message that we went to the market with early on this quarter, I think it's been received pretty well. Consistently, our path is very different than what other LiDAR companies are focusing on, and we're focused more on solving the key problem that the OEMs themselves are facing right now, which is how to actually deploy a true Level 3 ADAS system. Then, of course, expanding that into Level 2+ and perhaps, if possible, with the right cost structure to Level 2.
You know, we have a very unique approach and of course, it's because of our core technology, how we do everything inside our ASIC, and how our software actually is also inside the ASIC. Specifically what really resonates with them is the fact that there's a cost advantage that they can see even as they start the conversation. The feature set that they're talking about, the kinda scenarios in a driving situation that they face that their teams are not able to solve right now, that we are actually, you know, focused on that. We are, you know, working on test track testing to demonstrate to them that with a LiDAR and radar combination pipelined through our ASIC with our software, that we can actually get them much closer to solving those and if not solve them all the way.
I think like, you know, feedback has been really positive. Consistently, I am pleasantly surprised. You know, we started this journey, I would say in 2019 when we talked about it publicly, actually before that. We've had OEM engagement, or at least input and engagement since then, and even to this day, the specifications of what's required to solve the problem, you know, our hardware and our direction stay in line with what they expect. That's always a good confirmation every time we go back, that nothing has changed. If anything else, you know, almost all of them are coming closer to where we are.
That's a good confirmation that you know the hard work that we went into developing the hardware you know is gonna drive other companies as well, our competitors specifically, to try to find a way to get to these kind of performances. It's right now unclear if anybody can. Positive feedback so far. RFIs, as in like you know they engage to get more information about our technology, about how we would solve certain specific problems. We've had a couple of actually several RFIs, so we continue doing that. Positioning the companies for a future RFQ that we mentioned last time or a couple of calls ago in early 2023, they're preparing for. Things are moving along and I'm very happy with where we are.
That's great. No, that's great to hear that the feedback has been overall actually positive so far. That's great to hear. Now, what do you think are some of the key characteristics that OEMs are looking for when they're making a decision of who to partner with? And maybe in addition, what are the key differentiators in MicroVision's LiDAR products?
I'm gonna summarize all the different meetings of what my impression is. Number one is they actually wanna make sure that the people they're talking to, they have a pedigree, the company has a pedigree. You know, our MicroVision's 20+ years history of being in this field with our MEMS-based technology for several different areas actually goes pretty well because they know it's substantial. You know, year after year, decade after decade, MicroVision has been able to engage with top-tier OEMs and deliver technology. The next one that actually gets the most smiles and positive response is when they finally wrap their understanding around why our cost structure is so predictable at such an early stage.
I would say those two things are the biggest, the strongest pillars that they start with, you know, to get confident to dive into the technology. You can ask the question about what's differentiated about you. Those two, once they're established as premise, which is always very easy for us, the next one is now we start diving into our features in the LiDAR and of course the software. Then the conversation gets easy. I can just say it very clearly, for some of the scenarios they talk about, we describe exactly how in our technology that scenario is handled.
You know, the light bulb moment, I mean, the reason I go to these meetings is just to make sure that you go, you know, face the potential customers in the future and get the feedback of what's really necessary, right? It's not second or third hand. I feel pretty confident that the paths that we have described to them, their concern is not that we're gonna deliver it. They wanna see the data from our track testing, from some of the other milestones we described. That's the positive part of it. What's differentiated about us is to solve this problem, if you think about it, I'm gonna give you a scenario. Let's just start with that. Think about you're driving on a three-lane highway. You're in the middle lane.
There's an 18-wheeler right at like 02:00 , and there's another 18-wheeler, you know, probably 40 ft in front of that first 18-wheeler that's next to you. In the leftmost lane, you can see about 100 m out as a driver that there is, like, either debris or there's like some, like Jersey barriers that are coming up. That lane is getting funneled into the middle lane. All right? Now suddenly, you're driving, let's say 130 km/h or 60-70 mph. All of a sudden, a car appears instantly between those two 18-wheelers. If you think about it was hidden by the 18-wheeler. You could not see it, but it suddenly juts out. All right? A human driver would do what? Slam on the brakes. Sometimes that's not the safest option available.
An average driver, so let's say when I was an inexperienced driver in my teenage years, you have not seen this. You don't know what to do, right? You panic, actually. You don't know if you wanna go in the left lane and slam the brakes or slam the brakes where you are or just sort of coast along. To solve that problem, you know, this is where the LiDAR really comes in, and this is where our software really will, you know, take care of the situation. If you think about that problem, deterministically speaking, there's actually only one solution, and the solution is apply brake. Even though the left lane is open for 120 m out, there is no option to go to the left lane, slow down, and come back in. That's more dangerous.
It's a dangerous maneuver. This is where the computer systems, you know, really get all this stuck because the amount of time they have to make a decision like that to plan the maneuver is very little. Instantly, these scenarios are very hard to find a truly deterministic solution to truly say that, you know, every time the scenario comes up, this is what's gonna happen. With our solution, since there is no big amount of machine learning algorithms required to classify things and recognize them, this is just drivable, not drivable space. As something appears, it knows that 120 m out, there's another object. Knowing the vehicle dynamics, you have to start applying the brake, but you don't have to slam it. You can feather the brake so you can be stopping or, you know, slowing down at a reasonable rate.
That could be done with the LiDAR directly. This is one of the test scenarios I'm describing that our team's actually gonna be testing in a test track, you know, in a little bit right now. These are the kind of scenarios, and there are several of these, that we actually share with the OEMs, but this is what we're focused on. They find this because this is their list of scenarios that they have never found a solution. Any driver can tell you these are realistic scenarios that happen quite often actually on a higher speed. If things that are typical on driving, you know, in any given week, you could, you know, be faced with some of these scenarios that we talk about.
If current solutions, current sensors cannot provide that, and here comes a company that's not just a LiDAR, but with a software solution that can identify drivable, not drivable space and try and help them mitigate these kind of scenarios. That's an actually very important step forward. This is why I really believe MicroVision is so differentiated from everybody else. There's lots of LiDAR companies. A lot of people talk about software, but nobody's talking about what's the problem you're solving, that you have to replace an experienced driver, a very good, experienced driver with a computer system that is incredibly fast compared to a human being, but has to be more consistent like a human being. That's what we're focused on, and that's the response that I get. You know, how differentiated we are is always very positive.
Oh, that's great. That's very helpful. Maybe to elaborate a bit further there, you know. Two of the very unique and superior characteristics of MicroVision's product is that it you know has the high resolution on the LiDAR piece, which in addition to the proprietary software on custom ASIC. Maybe can you just simplify to investors how do those two kind of work together and complement each other to ultimately provide what's a superior product?
Yeah. The hardware is very important. This all starts with the hardware. Ultimately, we are gonna sell a LiDAR, a piece of hardware into the OEMs and Tier 1, that ecosystem. The hardware is unique based on our proprietary technology. Some of the features that we're doing, it's because the way the hardware design that we've done and matured over 20 years. That's what people can count on. We've done this before. We've demonstrated before. The software part we've also done before, but this software part is focused on the automotive side of it. What we do, our software runs fully pipelined in our ASIC, and our ASIC does not have massive amounts of GPU, massive amounts of CPU. It is specifically focused on MCU and DSP, which is a lower cost system.
We can add more things to it, make that more sophisticated, but to get a very cost competitive system to be able to enter the big volume market of Level 2+ and Level 2, this first ASIC is targeting to run our software fully pipelined in our ASIC, which is inside our LiDAR. This is coming from inside our hardware. The lion's share of the work, the heavy lift that is required to do all the work in a domain controller, that heavy lift is done within our ASIC, within our LiDAR. Therefore, it gives higher levels of safety possibility to our OEMs with this product. The hardware absolutely is very important. Without that, getting this high resolution at range, at low latency, that's a function of our hardware. That is not done by software.
The software takes that, you know, that point cloud and again, in, you know, very fast turnaround, in very low latency, is able to output this drivable, not drivable. You're not going through different stacks and going to a GPU and, you know, taking a lot of time. You're running it what's called fully pipelined, meaning that when I'm outputting a point cloud, all the tags are already in the point cloud, as in drivable, not drivable. You don't have to wait. It's not a separate data stream. The point cloud is fully tagged and segmented.
This is actually a pretty big thing, and this is what, you know, most people in this field will say, "Well, that's like the heavy lift that you have to do." If your heavy lift is done and it's coming out streaming, that solves a lot of the problems, and this enables our OEMs that wanna build even more sophisticated features on their domain controller, enables them as well.
No, that's, I think that's very helpful, and I think that will be a key differentiator, no doubt. Maybe switching to strategy a little bit. Can you remind us what is your go-to market strategy and what are the three pillars that you are looking to develop partnerships with?
Yep. Let me take this question. Our go-to-market strategy essentially is around this ecosystem which consists of the end customers, which are at the OEMs at the top, which are in turn being serviced or provided these parts, these components by the Tier 1s, and then ultimately the chip providers, which is, you know, the silicon in all these systems which is being put together or assembled together by the Tier 1s, which is ultimately consumed by the OEMs. As you can imagine, our strategy has to be focused around these three very important players in this ecosystem. The first most important element is the first pillar is the OEMs. Now, obviously, as Sumit described, the OEMs has these specifications or problems that they are ultimately trying to solve.
Our goal is to market the product and its specifications to these OEMs so that there is a clear partnership or what we call as a directed-buy agreement, where the OEM has locked in the features that they would like to have in their cars, in their fleet, from the LiDAR unit, the perception unit, which would ultimately come from MicroVision. Now, once that's done, you can probably realize that those units would have to be produced in hundreds of thousands and perhaps in millions for that particular OEM. Now, this is where the partnership with the Tier 1 comes. Now before I even get to that part, I think one thing that Sumit pointed out is LiDAR or LiDAR is part of the ADAS solution that the Tier 1 is ultimately providing to the OEM.
Now, what that means is we are simply providing the LiDAR perception unit and the associated software and the sensor fusion with just the radar, which will ultimately be taken by the OEM to build a world model, which would be in combination with the camera modules that they already have. Now, Tier 1 have these very strong, deep relationships where they are manufacturing on a mass production scale, these units, these ADAS components for the OEMs. Now, this is where the manufacturing partnership with the Tier 1s will come into the equation. Because as you can imagine, it's gonna be very hard for anybody else to make these production units at that scale. Obviously the Tier 1s have that advantage with the OEMs.
This is the second pillar of the go-to-market strategy that we believe will be a very critical element of the go-to-market plan that we have. Lastly, the silicon partnerships, because obviously like I mentioned, the part of the chips that are ultimately part of the CPU, the domain controllers, et cetera, that's what is part of the chip companies. That's the partnership we are looking to strike with them because we are ultimately gonna be using their chips in which our software will be coded as part of the lidar perception unit that will ultimately be used by the OEMs.
Thanks, Anubhav. Can you maybe remind investors how the profit sharing agreements will work?
Yep. I think the way to think about this is our revenue will consist of two streams, the hardware stream and the software stream. Now, what I mean by that is the hardware stream would be the LiDAR unit that is ultimately being supplied or provided, which is enabling the point cloud, which would ultimately be processed by the software that is on our perception unit. Now, this is the hardware stream. We will have a manufacturing partnership once that directed-buy agreement with the OEM is established.
Now, I'd like you to recall all hardware products go through the same life cycle where initially the cost of the hardware is high, and then it tapers off as the hardware becomes more commercialized on a mass scale, on a mass adoption basis from that standpoint. Now, the hardware share, the profit sharing agreement would be, we believe the ASP from in our model or in our framework of for the next decade until 2030, we believe that the price or the average selling price would be $500. The hardware stream would be a gross profit sharing agreement with the Tier 1, because ultimately Tier 1 is taking on the production risks to manufacture these production, the hardware which will ultimately be used by the OEMs.
Now, we believe there could be a 50% partnership of the sharing of the gross profits just on the hardware piece for this every LiDAR unit that would be produced by the Tier 1 and installed into the OEM. Now, we believe that this revenue stream should approximately be 1/4 of the total revenue of $2 billion-$4 billion that we have estimated.
The second biggest, or rather the biggest revenue stream would be the software, because I think as Sumit described, this is the core engine that is enabling the processing of the point cloud, which ultimately is feeding the decision to the CPU of the car as to whether to slam the brakes or, you know, reduce the speed whatsoever the decision that's been conveyed by the LiDAR unit to the motherboard of the car's computer. This is the software which we believe will command about 20%-25% of the ASP for every LiDAR box or perception unit that would be shipped by the Tier 1 and used in the OEM.
Now, if you recall, we have estimated that every Level 2+ car will have one LiDAR unit and every Level 3 autonomy car will have two LiDAR units. Now, this has been the basis for estimating what would be the total number of LiDAR units that would be needed to be provided to the entire automotive market. This, the hardware and the software streams will be the components essentially which will correspond to every LiDAR unit that is used on these L2 and L3 cars, that will be rolled out until 2030.
Got it. A lot of great information there. Thanks, Anubhav. We'll follow up with some of the financial questions. Maybe before we get into those, can you remind us and maybe walk us through your timeline currently? You know, when do you expect to achieve the certification through third-party testing? And when again do you expect to start selling these strategic samples?
Sure. We have three milestones laid out for this year, 2022. In June, we expect to complete the track testing which Sumit described, which is specifically the scenarios, one of the scenarios that he talked about in which the track test results would be demonstrated to the OEMs. Because this is where, as you can imagine, this is part of the RFQs that the OEMs are currently in the process of to ultimately select the LiDAR partner they would be using to make sure which would be their partner in all their cars when they get rolled out in 2024, 2025. Now that is our milestone number one.
Milestone number two is the Class 1 certification, which we expect to complete by Q3 2022. This is where the safety, as you can imagine, is very critical because, again, we have talked about this, the power and the safety of lasers is of extreme importance here because we are using 905 nm LiDAR and our Class 1 certification by a third party will certify that this product is safe for being used in environments like, you know, at crossroads where pedestrians are and it's the harm that the lasers can cause is not gonna be as much, is below the levels that, you know, is needed for lasers of this power.
Lastly, we have some strategic sample sales by the end of 2022, which we intend to sell to some of the OEMs as well. These are the milestones that we have, and we are on track for them in 2022.
That's great. Thanks for that. Sumit, maybe to turn it back to you, I wanted to talk about the competitive landscape a little bit. Maybe to start off, how competitive would you characterize the LiDAR industry today?
I think if you look at the landscape of companies that are out there, right? I think it's important to see the content of what they're saying and the premise that I described early on, the two important premise, the pedigree of the company, you know, the, their core technology and the cost. If you were to apply that across, you know, all the companies, right? This is where the sifting starts happening. I think it's great that there's a lot of smart people out there, right? There's these smart people have actually, you know, developed a piece of hardware that, you know, warrants some level of notice, right? And they've done some early work on there.
Again, a product that's gonna end up in a vehicle at these, the kind of volumes we're talking about, you know, the vehicle designs, vehicle costs, these things have been known for decades, right? We have to be all in line. When I look at the competitive landscape, what I always see missing is, you know, there is nobody with years and years, decades worth of pedigree, of IP, of delivering to OEMs at cost, you know, in a very, very tough environment. If somebody has to actually evaluate and say, you know, is there companies on one side that can be counted upon to deliver of what they're saying, like, you know, Class 1 like Anubhav says that. Well, we have experience delivering Class 1 for many, many years.
Even if you go to 1550 nm, there is no competitive way a 1550 nm at a price point has been delivered to the automotive industry. The sifting starts to happen very, very quickly. You know, there's lots of new technologies like flash-based and, you know, all the different techniques people are talking about. You know, think about those subgroup of companies, those cohorts. You go to a wedding, there's two photographers with a flash camera. They stand next to each other and they flash it. What happens? They blind each other, right? So that shot you never see in the wedding photos. Well, think about in a traffic situation where you can't avoid, you can't miss a frame or several frames. That's a pretty deep issue, right?
Perhaps for like parking applications, which are, again, not that important, you can have a flash-based LiDAR. All right. When you get to highway pilot speeds, that's pretty challenging at that point, and there could be a very small group. Take the 70-odd companies globally that are in there, you can start sifting them. Some of them, their technology is adequate and sufficient for parking type application. You know, like sort of like, a valet parking kind of thing, right? Some of the technologies are okay, which will not give you the look and the feel of a high-speed vehicle like a truck, where you can have a bump out, right? That it's more delivery services and things like that. They don't care the way it looks like.
It's a service that they care about that they're trying to monetize, right? Some companies will participate there. What we really wanted to make sure everybody understood was the big prize is, of course, the nearly 100 million, 87-100 million vehicles that are sold annually. You know, lots of them on the road. For decade-long this input that is gonna be for a ADAS safety car targeting that very big market. When you think about all the companies, the competitive landscape shrinks even more. There's only a handful of companies already that can actually address what I'm just describing, a high-speed highway pilot. The landscape is, yeah, there's lots of names in there, right? It's to start putting them in subcategories of what is specifically area that they're targeting.
Now, everybody says, you know, it's, you know, this big of a market TAM or market SAM, but they're not specific where they're competing. Where we're differentiated is we are competing in the one, the big prize. You know, we've clearly stated it, and we continue talking about how we're gonna compete there. So far, not a single company has actually come out and said that they are in the same place that we're competing. I feel pretty good where we are. Again, I acknowledge, lots of smart people out there, and we welcome the challenge.
Got it. That's great. Maybe to follow up from there, who do you consider your most direct competitors? Do a lot of them offer a proprietary software solution to the best of your knowledge?
I think it's important to be humble, and I'm always humble about this, right? Who do I consider a competitor? They're all smart. They all have access to capital. Who knows what they're working on, right? I can just talk about ourselves. For as far as direct competitors, you know, yeah, I would think there's a shortlist in my mind. You know, right now, till somebody starts talking about ADAS, I would not call them a competitor openly. Right now, you know, I would not say there's a whole lot of people talking about it. Once they do, I'll be happy to point them out. You know, till then, you know, just, you know, cut me some slack on that one, Andres. As far as like software, this is a very, very big question.
This is a very important point. The word software sounds very general. I think as I earlier described, when others so far in their public comments, in their corporate decks, you know, what they're communicating to Wall Street, right? You know, I read it, read all of that. It's kinda confusing to me because they're not being very specific because they have a LiDAR hardware, but the software they're talking about would be running on the domain controller. I think one of the other LiDAR companies, I'm not gonna mention them by name, but they've just said that, "Oh, yeah, that software is on the domain controller." Well, the software that's on the domain controller is controlled by the OEMs and Tier 1s. You would be actually, your software is in direct competition with your customer.
You know, it's rather dubious to me, like, you know, what's the probability or possibility that anybody would actually adopt their software solution? Us, again, we're differentiated. Our software, you know, with the right byte-sized on edge computing within our lidar, running pipeline, and significantly enables all the features. Therefore, you know, you may need a super-duper team of like 5,000 software engineers to create domain controller software. I'm sure there's a smaller number, but like, you know, 600, maybe thousands of them to create the kind of software that goes on domain controllers, okay? What we're saying is the thing that we do on our edge computing, our software does the lion's share of the work that any company that wants to do a software on domain controller, like any OEM that wants to provide it.
Like, you know, for example, think about some of the German OEMs or the U.S. or the Asian OEMs, the top-tier ones. They have big teams. What if there's a smaller OEMs that are competing in that space? Those smaller OEMs do not have a way to compete. With our software, their teams can produce features and safety features in line with what's required by regulation. We would be enabling a wider range of OEMs to participate into this. Now imagine what our software would enable a top-tier OEM to do beyond that. If you're gonna produce some really high features, it's like the precursor. You know, it's the kinda stem cell. The software, what we do, what it outputs, enables them to do something even more incredible. You get me? That, again, is a differentiator.
Far, not a single company has been so specific and so clear about their software strategy. You know, there's lots of words on software and classification, and they're kinda jumbled up in there, right? I think I'd let it be till they can provide clarity. I would not consider them a competitor.
Yeah, no, that's a great answer, and I think investors need to be aware that that's one of the key differentiators, right? Is this proprietary software, this edge computing on custom ASIC really helps to complement the high frequency of the hardware LiDAR product, and so far, that is a big advantage in the industry. We have a question here from an investor. What is the earliest you could foresee announcing a partnership with an OEM?
I think I'll take this one, Anubhav, if you don't mind, right? I think Anubhav's got some comments on this one also, probably. I think you know we talked about this publicly, you know, what our steps are in 2022, right? I think Anubhav touched upon that, right? I think last year in one of the earnings call, I talked about like the timeline. The big prize, you know, it's the RFQ. When OEMs start their RFQ cycle, you wanna be prepared for that. You wanna be in line with that, okay? So far, everything we've done, you know, as Anubhav mentioned just in his previous comment, we remain on track in 2022. What we're you know where we're looking ahead, you know, we're feeling pretty confident about it.
I think to be specific about when a partnership would happen, right, you can't talk about that because, you know, OEMs by themselves have their own timelines, right? You have to be respectful of that. You know, I think I will just acknowledge that, you know, when the time is right, we will talk more about it. You know, OEMs will control what they wanna announce when.
Got it. Okay. Maybe on a macro landscape here, a question for either of you. Do you see any consolidation in the sector, in the LiDAR sector via M&A? Is that something that you think investors should be mindful of? I'm just curious on kinda your thoughts there on the general sector.
Yeah. I'll take this one. Look, I think obviously there are quite a few public companies in the LiDAR market. I think as history has sort of, you know, we have seen in history, you know, there are always consolidation opportunities available, you know, whenever there are more than, you know, five or here in this example, you know, more than, even 10 big players. Ultimately, I think this would be sort of a very obvious conclusion that there probably would be only a handful of LiDAR players, let's say five, six years or again, you know, down the line. The timeline is obviously which will depend upon the OEM adoption, the rollouts of the LiDAR units, et cetera.
Ultimately, we feel that, you know, again, being by the virtue of these many public companies available, the M&A or the consolidation would always be something that the LiDAR industry will go through.
Got it. Thanks for that. I just wanna take this moment to remind, again, any investors on the call, if there's any questions you'd like to ask, please go ahead and email those to us, and we'll be happy to ask them on your behalf. Maybe switching to some of the financials a little bit. You know, I know we've talked about the two different revenue streams, the hardware and the software. I think, you know, investors know that the software is really gonna represent the larger portion of those two. Can you maybe just help again and remind us and just quantify what you foresee that breakdown between the software revenue and the hardware revenue to be going forward?
Yep. We expect, as I mentioned, the hardware becomes more and more commercialized over the next, you know, the next phase of this LiDAR product. The software will remain the key engine, or the key growth driver or the major contributor to the revenue streams. The split, we believe, is approximately gonna be one-fourth and three-fourths, respectively for the hardware and the software. The software we think about this is gonna be very similar to what we have seen previously, to what happened with Mobileye, as well, when the camera modules were getting more and more adopted by OEMs, towards, you know, the early part of the last second.
I think we would see something similar happen in the LiDAR space as well, because I think as we talked about, the software remains to be the key engine here, and we expect the software to approximately command 15%-25%, roughly, of the average selling price, because that's the, again, to simplify it for everybody, it's the nervous system or the engine which is actually running the LiDAR and ultimately taking the data, the point cloud, and then communicating with the controllers on the car for, I think, as Sumit described, free space cluster versus obstacles, which come out from the point cloud. Now, that's what we believe to be the major revenue contributor to the revenue stream of MicroVision.
As you can imagine, the cost associated with developing these, the product and the software is mainly gonna be the engineering headcount or the engineering team that we have, which will be leading the engineering software or the development of the software that will ultimately go into the hardware. As you can imagine, the revenue will be contributing to a much higher contribution margin to the bottom line, just by the virtue of the cost structure of the company and the way it is delivering the product to the customer, by the virtue of the go-to-market strategy.
Got it. Maybe let's talk about the guidance that you've announced early this year, right? You've guided cumulative revenues between $2 billion and $4 billion through 2030 and $1 billion - $2 billion in EBITDA also through 2030. What are some of the assumptions that are embedded in that guidance?
Sure. I think the $2 billion-$4 billion revenue, the cumulative revenue until 2030 is premised on the fact, or by estimating what will be the number of L2 and L3 cars that will be produced every year all the way until 2030. I think as I mentioned earlier, we have estimated the L2 is gonna have one LiDAR perception unit and L3 will have 2. What we have estimated from a $2 billion-$4 billion to estimate the $2 billion-$4 billion revenue, an ASP of $500. This is a bit on the conservative side because I think when we polled the industry executives and experts, we got the response that the ASP would be closer to $800 in the beginning.
Obviously, as I mentioned, previously as well, the hardware product, you know, as happened with camera modules, the price always comes down. Just to be on the conservative side, we estimated that it would be 500 all throughout, from a conservative standpoint, and that's how we get to $2 billion-$4 billion.
There are two more assumptions that actually went into making this estimate, which are that we would have 2+ partnerships with the OEMs, and we believe that our market share will gradually rise from 15% to, you know, 40% by the end of 2030. Now, which again is, I think again, just sort of reiterating my prior comment, you know, that probably the LiDAR market should have two to three players dominating the market by the end of 2030 on a steady state basis. Those are some of the key assumptions that went into estimating what would be the cumulative revenue in this example $2 billion-$4 billion until 2030.
Now, EBITDA, just if I could, you know, get down to the EBITDA, because the EBITDA is truly a function of what would be our cost to deliver this revenue. As I mentioned, the engineering team, which is responsible for upgrading the software, customizing the software as the need of the OEMs evolve over the course of the next three to five to seven years until 2030. That's what we would need the team to scale up. Remember, there would be obviously some SG&A expenses associated with marketing, et cetera. Really the cost which will be driving the headcount will be a function of the number of resources that we will need to have to deliver this product to the OEMs until 2030.
Maybe to follow up from that, you've mentioned as well that guidance translates roughly into 25-30 million unit sales, again, cumulative through 2030. When should investors start to see those ramp it up?
Yep. That's a great question. I think the ramp will be towards the end of 2024 and 2025, because that's sort of when even if you look at the chart which estimates the number of L3 vehicles coming into the market in 2025, that's when the trajectory sort of is expected to take off. That's what we believe as well would be the year when the OEMs start to roll out LiDARs in their cars across the board, not just in the U.S., but in European markets as well as some Asian markets as well. That's truly we believe would be the inflection point, sort of when LiDAR would be adopted on a more universal basis for across the board.
That's great. Thank you. We have another question here from an investor, and I think it's a great question. In your current guidance, and please correct us if we're wrong, you don't include any upside of your existing products, right? Like your interactive display, your consumer LiDAR. The question is, what could wins in those sectors, how could those affect guidance? And maybe before we answer, let's just quickly confirm that upside from those other verticals is not embedded in the current guidance, correct?
That is correct. Because I think we wanted to talk about the automotive LiDAR applications at this point, because I think as Sumit talked about, we are only focused on the ADAS component and not the autonomous driving because ADAS sector is the one which we believe is more immediately monetizable and has broader applications across the OEMs until 2030. This is why our focus has been on automotive LiDAR and hence all the estimations that we have talked about ultimately trickle down from the LiDAR application of these cars that we estimate to be about $80 billion in cumulative revenue opportunity. Now, obviously, we have our existing business of interactive displays, augmented reality, AR that we have.
Now, at where we stand today, we do not see that market would have these kind of revenue or the opportunity that the automotive LiDAR, especially specifically the ADAS, presents to us. However, obviously, since we have these products off the shelf, we would be ready to support our customers if this sector were to take off. Now, I think the real challenge here, Andres, is there a market big enough where people are willing to pay $400-$500 for the glasses, to, you know, for, the AR features, or AR functionalities that exist today. Now, if that were to change, like I said, these are the products which, you know, we have already demonstrated with, specifically with Microsoft, in the HoloLens technology.
You know, this is something that we can use to help our customers if this is something that takes off in the next three to five years. At this point, to answer your question, the estimates do not include any contributions from that sector.
That's great. Thanks for clarifying that. One follow-up from the same investor is, if revenues aren't expected to ramp up until 2024 and 2025, then what can investors expect top line in 2022 and 2023? And what part of that is related to the royalties from Microsoft?
Yep. In 2022, we probably expect another $2.5 million to be recognized as revenue, as I think I had mentioned in my prior earnings call as well. This would be attributable to the Microsoft contract back in the day. In terms of any additional revenue on top of that, I think as we described, there might be some co-development agreements, there might be some strategic sample sales that we may expect to come in 2022.
Again, they would not be as significant as when we expect the production to start, because when the production starts, that's truly the software business model of the company you know comes into play, where every LiDAR unit that gets shipped or used by the OEMs, we will be recognizing revenue because it would have our hardware and software in it.
Got it. Maybe two follow-up financial questions, and then, Sumit, we'll turn it back to you. You mentioned in the last earnings call your cash used in operating activities in 2021 was about $29 million or so. What type of annual cash burn do you anticipate going forward?
Yeah. I think I talked about this in 2021, the cash used in operating activities was about $29 million. We expect that this number would be broken down into two components. You know, I'll in fact even simplify it more. Let me talk about the R&D and the SG&A expense, and you know, I'll tie it back to the P&L of the company as well so that investors have a much better clarity as to how we expect those numbers to trail. For example, our R&D expense was about $24 million on the P&L, which included about $6 million of non-cash stock-based component.
That leaves us about with $18 million in cash expense for the R&D OpEx of the company. We expect this number to be slightly higher in 2022, partly because of some of the ramp in engineering resources in our software team, and some other resources that we are bringing on board to help ramp up our efforts, as the RFQs that Sumit talks about with the OEMs sort of, you know, accelerates. This number would be, again, you know, it won't be, you know, very different from the $18 million number in 2021, but it will still be a bit higher just because of these investments that we're gonna be making in 2022.
Now, the other aspect or the other major driver of the cash OpEx is SG&A. SG&A in 2022 would also be slightly higher than 2021. This would be because of increased some of the marketing efforts, some of the consulting firms that we are engaged with to get more visibility. I think we talked about some of the tests that we are doing on these track testing, et cetera. This number would be again a bit higher, but we expect this number to be well below around you know the $40 million mark. It will be somewhere between $30 million-$40 million this year.
Got it. Thank you. Maybe our last financial question here is, you know, MicroVision is in a bit of a unique position in that it, you know, a lot of your competitors went through the de-SPAC IPO route, whereas you guys have been public for a number of years now, and you have this ATM program in place, which again, we think is a big differentiator relative to the competition. Explain to us how do you expect to use this program? When can investors potentially see you utilizing this program, and kinda what would be the purpose there?
Yep. I think one of the key differentiators, as Andres, you pointed out, is actually the cash burn that we have as compared to our competitors, which are, you know, one of them is even four times where we are, on an annual basis. Obviously we do not have as big cash requirements as some of our peers, which did go through a very intensive capital raising process as part of the SPAC and the de-SPAC process subsequently. We are a more traditional, purist company, you know, more conservative, you know, just by our DNA, because I think as Sumit mentioned, we have been around for over two decades.
I think the ATM program just seems to give us that ability or that flexibility to compete with our peers, that if need be, we can access the capital markets to put more cash on the balance sheet. I think previously, our ATM programs, we utilized it in the first half of 2021 when the share prices of not just us, but even our peers, were very attractive, and we made use of the capital markets to strengthen the balance sheet from that perspective. In the second half of 2021, we did not use the ATM because we saw a broader weakness in the LiDAR market.
I think the way we think about the ATM program is more as a flexibility or a tool that we can use as a measure against some of our peers who have raised quite a lot of capital in as part of the SPAC process.
Got it. That's great. Thanks for that. Sumit, maybe to turn it back to you there. What are some important milestones that investors should be looking for MicroVision to accomplish both this year and maybe next year?
I think, you know, I think we've highlighted that. I think this June milestone that we have been very public about, you know, you have scenarios talking about the highway pilots. It's actually very important because one of the foundational parts of the argument are that highway pilot systems are gonna dominate, you know, the big volume, the big margin, the big, you know, expansion that it's gonna see even more than autonomous driving.
In the future, where the EV vehicle wave is coming, ADAS and the safety that we'll provide is a pretty big reason why people are gonna start choosing which EV vehicle they go with, not just the name brand, 'cause all of them will have the range, all of them will have the, you know, high torque, you know, the nice speed, features that others are seeing so far. ADAS will make a difference. This June 1 is actually pretty important. You know, it is something we'll demonstrate that will resonate. What we demonstrate in June, right, is gonna sort of like resonate out in the market, out in the ether for years and years to come, that a company in 2022 demonstrated this and, you know, it is gonna be part of the zeitgeist for a long time.
That's a very, very big one. I'm very excited about that, and, you know, things look pretty good so far. Now, the other one is, again, the other piece of the premise has always been one of the pillars is cost. You can't do this business unless you know how to control cost and you can see what the margin's gonna be in the future. Us achieving our Class 1 this year is actually very important point, you know, for this hardware we're gonna do, because it demonstrates that the cost is contained. Because we can use a 905 nm laser. A third party is quantifying that this is a product that is clearly Class 1 ready, so it can ship out as, you know, just like anything else, right?
It could be part of your normal day-to-day life, and it needs no extra precautions. That is a very, you know, big step ahead of us, right? I think like, you know, our sample sales that we talked about, you know, yeah, it's small, but it's really targeted towards our go-to-market strategy, which is OEM. We wanna get them some samples. We wanna, you know, do test drives with them, you know, utilize our demo vehicles the best possible and also, you know, start engaging with them on their demo vehicles, right? I think the two of the big ones are, as I mentioned, and the third one is, you know, sort of set this up for next year, but as I've mentioned previously, RFQs will happen with OEMs with different horizons.
You know, there's gonna be cascading of, you know, who wants to be first as in with their features and who wants to be second. I think it sets us up for 2023. Beyond that, I think in 2023, as we get closer to 2023, you know, I'll start setting out the narrative for then. For now, I think I want us to just all remain focused on this. Once this is achieved, you know, the base premise of our differentiation, our value proposition, our strategic advantage, sustainable strategic advantage, right, will be demonstrated in 2022. I'm very excited about this.
That's great. Thank you. You know, we'd love to get your thoughts on the different levels of autonomy and kinda how you see that progressing over time, right? You've mentioned in your guidance you assume one LiDAR unit for Level 2 and two for Level 3. I'm curious, how quickly do you see the EV space transitioning into the higher levels of autonomy, and what would that mean for MicroVision?
I think, let me answer the second part first, and then I'll go back to your first part of the question. I think the EV space, I think the belief very strongly is that ADAS, these higher levels of ADAS features are gonna be one of the base reasons why people will differentiate one brand versus the other. Yes, we have to double time. We have to work very, very hard. We have to finish our technology part of it, right? Also connect with these future waves because from the get-go, you know, there are already EV vehicles out there, right? I think like years ago, right, think about the Chevy Volt. Years ago, you know, it was pretty affordable. It was a pretty nice vehicle actually. EV has been there more than a decade now.
Certainly, like, you know, what Tesla and others have done, right? It should be, you know, really regarded as opened up the gate for the future for everybody. As you think about more and more OEMs entering the market, more and more choices available to consumers, they'll have to decide how to differentiate, right? ADAS is a key feature, you know. Higher safety at a very reasonable cost. Those are the kind of things, you know, airbags are mandatory, they're there. Safety seat belts, ABS, all sorts of other features that are kind of mandatory or, you know, they are standard nowadays. The next round of features, why there's such a push for ADAS right now is because it is the reason why potentially in the future, people will differentiate one brand versus the other, right, at a certain price point.
That's an important thing to remember. We believe very strongly that those kind of volumes in ADAS are actually much more compelling and more reasonable as EV starts taking more and more over the fleet of most OEMs. Okay. Let me answer your first question first about the features of ADAS versus autonomous driving, right? Anybody that's on this call today, I think I would like them to put aside if they're investor or a presenter or, you know, MC. Think about your general day-to-day life, how you make a decision about driving, right? How many of us are willing to give up driving our car? I like driving my car, right? I want my car to be safer. I mean, I'm a pretty safe driver, but I want it to be safer. People are not quite ready to give that up.
Same thing with AR. AR is a big, big market. We all know it. It's sort of like what the cell phone was when people were describing well before the iPhone came out and totally changed the paradigm of what a smartphone is. People knew it, this is gonna be big, but all they had was Nokia and BlackBerry and others, right? But then things started changing, and it was a revolution. AR will be like that someday, but not right now. That's the same way I feel about autonomous driving. It will be big someday. It could be a generational thing, but not right now.
That's why if you think about most of the autonomous driving companies, they're focusing on trucking and delivery and some of these other applications where they can develop their products and they deliver their strategies before they can actually say that, "Are consumers ready to give up driving their vehicle?" Like, do they have systems that they trust so much that it could be hands-off? The answer, you know, most people on the call, if they were actually honest about the question I just posed, most people I've ever talked to, including when I go to OEMs, you know, they all nod and say, "Yeah, that's gonna be hard because everybody likes driving their car in our generation still, even younger generation." ADAS is gonna remain for a very long time, the biggest prize.
If you think about the numbers that independent put together, it's not even the big portion of, you know, the amount of vehicles that are sold annually globally yet, which is growing by the way. We're taking a very small market segment part of it, right? There's huge amounts of growth in ADAS there. Yeah, I acknowledge that, autonomous driving just like AR, the promise is there. When it will happen is unclear, but the big market is ADAS, and I do believe that the EV vehicles, the compelling reason why one person is gonna pick one versus the other is gonna be the ADAS features that come with it.
That's great. No, that's very informative. Thank you for that. In our last maybe five questions here, I just wanna ask a couple of quick questions, and then I wanna give you the opportunity to share any closing remarks that either of you would like to say. My last couple of questions are, you know, every company out there has some risk associated to the story. What would you say are the biggest risks associated with MicroVision stock? And are you impacted at all by the situation in Ukraine?
Yeah. I think I'm gonna divide the question in two sections, right? There's macro effects that are out of control. MicroVision, like other companies, we're a high growth company with a high potential, you know, incredible results possible in the future. We're doing everything possible to get through the steps, to get to the point where we can start monetizing what we've created, right? It's pretty clear that the market we're focusing on, our target customers, right, they're announcing timelines. It sorta gives, you know, investors the understanding of, like, you know, what's the risk factors down there, right? Those are. You're in a high growth area with a company with a differentiated product, okay?
You know, us as a company, we're very specific about how to step-by-step think about connecting to that big promised land that's several years away, okay? On the macro level, if you think about it, again, being a high growth company, what happens with the stock market, interest rates, wars, right? Those are out of our control. The way I look at it, that's like ebbs and flows of the general economy. You know, all boats in the high growth market will rise and fall with the tide that the market is gonna take us, right? The part that we can control, which is being very specific about our expenses, you know, capital, what are we working on? Who are we targeting? Our go-to-market strategy and how it's connecting, right? We run a very tight ship on that, and we communicate that directly to investors.
We wanna take, you know, that uneasiness out of, you know, how are we modeling everything. It has to be reasonable that other people can also acknowledge that there's nothing exotic about it. You know, there's innovation that we have done, right? The model that we're thinking about, how are we gonna connect, how are we spending money, how do we think about our logic of building the business out, you know, it's not exotic. You know, it is something that every investor should be able to put their brains around and say, "You know what? I can read the analyst reports. I can see what the management is saying," and they can build a model. I think, like, you know, what we can control, we're gonna control, but the other parts, including the war in Ukraine, right?
I mean, those are the ebbs and flows of the market, and, you know, we're gonna arrive, but we're gonna make sure that we are well-capitalized so we are not, you know, in any kind of jam. As far as our exposure to Ukraine, I think, you know, we are early, you know, and, we're gonna have our samples. We have actually diversified ourselves early on because of COVID. We, you know, purchased our automation. We purchased the key components. We've done all the key legwork ahead of time, so it does not impact any of the things we're saying, for 2022. I think so far, we do not believe we're impacted at all with the war in Ukraine.
That's great. Maybe my last question is, you know, what are the most important short-term catalyst that you think investors should be paying attention to?
I think the catalyst for the business is the, you know, the argument that, you know, I try to make today. The two catalysts ahead of us is our June milestones that we talk about, you know, demonstrating our, you know, these step scenarios, and the Class 1. Those two pieces, I would say, even years in the future, right, I will be able to remind investors, say, "Remember those things in 2022? Those two building blocks is gonna enable several years worth of differentiation and being cast, you know, as a one company that is focused on one area, the big prize, whereas all the other companies, right, are still sort of sifting themselves to in different parts of the smaller market." I think those two. I would really encourage that investors should be, you know, tuned into our earnings call.
You know, we're gonna try to give as many updates as possible as often as possible to sort of keep people going, understanding, you know, how we're making progress and why these things are so important to the company and to the market in general.
That's great. Well, that concludes our list of questions. Maybe before we wrap up, I wanna give either of you the opportunity to share any last closing remarks, any last thoughts you'd like to share again with the investment community.
Anubhav?
Yep. Look, I think we are focused on, as Sumit described, the 2022 milestones, which will further solidify the foundation of the company. We expect, as some of these milestones come to fruition, we would be able to post more updates for the broader market, and we're excited about the future.
I think the only thing I'd like to add is, like today, you know, I tried to cast the real story of how you can sift all the companies and, you know, the investors should really think about it and, you know, look at all the data that the other companies that have made public so far and really say, like, is anybody else? You know, is there really competition? I think, yeah, people have announced some partnerships with OEMs, but nothing of material where they can say where SOP would be. Nobody can really see that their current product, without significant amount of investment, like Anubhav pointed out, like sometimes some of them, 4x our OpEx, they're trying to catch up to 20 years' worth of work.
I feel like we're differentiated, and I feel like that, we're like in a good path and, you know, steps forward we're excited about.
That's great. Well, thank you again to the both of you for joining us today. Thanks again to everyone that dialed in. You know, maybe I'll finish off by saying that, you know, we do agree and we very much like the high resolution hardware LiDAR product combined with the proprietary software of the custom ASIC. We truly feel like that is a big differentiator. We're very excited to continue the conversation and continue this relationship. Thanks again, and have a good rest of the day.