Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining the Valens session. Valens Semiconductor is a fabless semiconductor company operating in two large and fast growing markets. One is automotive and the other is audio-video. Valens Semiconductor is a public company trading in the New York Stock Exchange.
It was listed in September 2021, and it enjoys a first-mover advantage with its standard-setting wired high speed connectivity solution deployed over simple and low-cost infrastructure. Its chipsets are found in millions of audio-video products globally. In terms of the automotive market, the chips are installed in Mercedes-Benz cars since 2020, and its ASIL compliance chipsets will play an important role in safety systems and autonomous driving.
With us this afternoon, we have Gideon Ben-Zvi, who is the CEO of Valens Semiconductor since 2020. Before that, he was founder of several startups and was also a partner in a leading Israeli VC, and he's on the board of Valens since 2011. Before I pass it on to Gideon, if you have any questions, I just remind you to submit them through the central website and push the button so I can see them as well. Gideon, please, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much, Doron. Good evening to everyone. Just, Doron, raise your hand if you all hear me well, so I know that actually I'm well heard. Great. So, as said, my name is Gideon Ben-Zvi. I'm many years in Valens board. I was founder of four companies.
Three of them had been exited before Valens. Valens actually is the first time I'm a CEO of a company that I'm not a Founder. I was on the board many years. We took public nine months ago in the New York Stock Exchange. Very fascinating company, and I hope that you'll find the same. Let me move to the presentation, if that's okay with you. Okay. Do you see the presentation?
Yes.
Okay. What Valens is about is the slogan, pushing the boundaries. We're pushing the boundaries of connectivity, and we're active when you need to connect between points in a very challenging infrastructure, like cables, and you need zero latency, the least possible to zero error rate, and in a very simple off-the-shelf infrastructure cables, and this is where we are.
We do it in two markets. We did it in audio-video, where we started, and we're growing, and it's a very significant market for us forever. In the new market, which is automotive, which we stepped in few years ago. This is who Valens is, and this is the highlights. Little bit who we are and what we are. The strategy of the company is to be the first mover advantage.
To take the first mover advantage wherever we act. We did it in the automotive and in the audio video. In both of them, we were founding a standard that became the world standard. So far, we sold over half a billion dollars of our chips. It's made of more than 13 million chips. We're a company with over 115 patents. We are actively marketing this total addressable market of $9 billion.
We changed the guidance this year. We took it up to $88 million. We actually, until now, had three earnings calls. In each of them, we outperformed our forecast. In each of them, we raised higher forecast than before and outperformed the upgraded forecast in each of the three earnings calls.
We have a very strong balance sheet with over $166 million as of the end of last quarter. We have some interesting plans. What we do with the money is definitely not money that is going to be spent on losses. This is not Valens case.
I will just repeat here two sentences, and I will not go all over this slide. In the automotive, our chipset is a one-stop shop for all the high speed connectivity in the cars. It can be symmetric and asymmetric connectivity. Our emphasis and the big step forward that we do is actually in the asymmetric, on which I will elaborate later. In the audio video market, we are deployed in millions of products.
Actually, I believe that each of you, every single day, is communicating with our chipset, whether it's in high-end conference rooms. I hope you all are very healthy people, but if you go to hospitals, a lot of the equipment of MRI and CT use the high-speed connectivity using our chips.
Those of you are driving new Mercedes also use our chips every day they drive their Mercedes cars. In the audio video, we became actually the incumbent of the high speed connectivity. You see it as you see here in conference room, and the verticals are corporate or education, also industrial, as mentioned, medical, command and control rooms. The next normal in our world is the hybrid education, hybrid conference rooms and what's called the huddle room, a new vertical which is expanding very fast.
In the automotive, we are in mass production with Mercedes-Benz since September 2020 with our chip, first generation of automotive, the VA6000. We are having a design win with a leading company in this industry named Stoneridge, which is actually one of the world top tier ones for truck industry. There we are doing a safety with a back camera, reverse camera.
Many people are not aware, but all those trucks don't have reverse camera. The technology needed to see the picture in the back was a huge technological barrier. Many tried and failed, and our chipsets solved the problem. We later introduced the first generation of what's called MIPI A-PHY. Let's start with what MIPI is. MIPI is a world standard organization.
All the cell phones in the world, all the way the video is transferred in the phone is using their standards. When they approach the world of automotive, they made a world bid and chose Valens. We are already of course the first mover in this section. At the moment, eight significant OEMs are testing our first generation of MIPI A-PHY chips with the Valens chips.
By the way, the MIPI A-PHY, I think one of the first time ever at IEEE, the well-known standard organization, adopted another standard which was not developed by IEEE when they developed MIPI A-PHY as a standard. What we're doing now in this market is expanding adoption.
We're collaborating with companies such as Sony, Mobileye, Sunny Optical. I will elaborate a little bit in further slides. In the audio video, I'll just give you some examples of something which you might have seen, which is The Wall by Samsung. It's Logitech Rally.
It's The Terrace by Samsung as well. In the COVID time, you've seen the use of the Dräger ventilator, the world-leading in ventilating machines in emergency rooms. Crestron, the flex video, which is I think the most popular today in the world. Siemens also in the healthcare and Epson in quite a lot of the range of their projectors and many, many more. Here are some names of companies that are using our technology.
Some of them is a repeat of previous slides like Logitech, Crestron, and Extron. Some of them and Clever Devices, Medtronic, ABB, and many, many more. As I said, we are in millions of products in the world markets. I'm moving now to the automotive, and let me start with a description.
Think about the future car with very sophisticated ADAS, very sophisticated camera, and very sophisticated computing power. This car is going near a non-malicious cellular antenna. Suddenly, the camera, which definitely sees and captures the red light or the passenger, cannot transfer it through the wires to the computing because of electromagnetic influence came from the antenna.
Antenna and electromagnetic influence is one of the threats of the future industry and the enemies and actually the biggest challenges of this industry in the future. We have more and more sophisticated technology, requires more and more bandwidth. The noise in the higher the bandwidth, the noise is exponentially higher.
Meaning 8 Gb will have far more noise than 4 Gb and far more exposure, much more than twice than 4 Gb because of the influence of noise such as electromagnetic or other noise. Our technology is actually unique by the ability to overcome those hassles, and also available to do it in cheaper cable than others, and also available to distinguish where a cable starts to be damaged and age and still use the cables more and more time than others.
In addition, when the cable is going to die or is going to end its life, our chipsets will know that and will know to alarm about it. Actually, we're speaking about technology that takes the next generation of transferring data over your cables, the need, which is a huge need for ADAS, in a very unique way that give a solution for the challenges of ADAS in the future.
We are based on two-way line of chips, the symmetric where we started and which is now in Daimler and will be soon in Stoneridge. The non-symmetric, which I described before, which are mainly sensor to ECU and OEMs are now, eight of them, are now looking how to integrate it into their systems, into their cars.
The deal with Daimler, we cannot give numbers, but I can tell you that, it will not take a long time, there will be no single Mercedes going out of the line without our chipsets. They gave us, and we believe it's a customer for many years.
We don't sell directly to Mercedes. The way you sell to this industry, Mercedes decide on the solution and the tier ones are those who are purchasing it, which is Continental, Harman, Molex and Bosch in this case. The Stoneridge I described to you and the Stoneridge opportunity, if you see this drawing, think about the driver who has a screen.
The screen connected to the connector which is between the truck and the trailer. This connector is as thick as a pipe of watering our garden. Through this cable, you have the lights, the ABS, the brakes and all those things, and through this line, we have to transfer very sensitive data of video coming from the back camera.
This is a very sophisticated and complex thing to do. We ourselves were astonished that our chips can go so far and do such a sophisticated and challenging mission. As the roadmap, the MIPI Alliance approved the standard, actually selected us among all the other industry who tried to be there.
Was trying to have the MIPI Alliance use their technology as the standard, and they chose Valens, a company with 300 employees, over companies who have more than 100 times employees than us. IEEE adopted it in 2021. We taped out the V7000 in Q4 2021, and now as of May 2022, it's tested in over eight OEMs and 10 other automotive tier ones.
This is, I'll call it the name dropping slides. Who are members in the MIPI, leading the MIPI A-PHY, and just mention six of them who gave very promising and flattering quotes, which is OmniVision, Mobileye, Sony, Sunny Optical, LG Innotek, Sumitomo Electric.
All of them are partners and are supporters and work with us in different collaboration schemes. The automotive connectivity market is driven by actually three drivers. First, you need the high speed, as I mentioned before, when you have high resolution, which has to accomplish with more and more challenges on the road that the car needs to decide, the vehicle need to decide what to do.
You have to be simple and cost-effective architecture, and this is a challenge that the world is going through. Of course, to answer the needs of the ADAS per se, the autonomous driving. If you look at 1990, these are the number of wires. This is how a car look. This is how a car looks today.
In the future, you will have what we call data center on wheels. It will have more than 20 sensors and cameras, radars and lidars, many displays, many 5G connected cars and speed, which is up to 16 gigabytes. We are preparing ourselves for the future and of course already in a situation which we answer the present.
In the present, cars will have 10 sensors, three or five cameras, one to five displays and 4G or LTE. The speed is today up to gigabit. We are already actually over supporting today more than the existing industry needs. Therefore, the future industry is already in a situation that they are testing us and we're already working on the future industry, which is not even mentioned on this slide.
Today's car architecture as you see in this car is not only this complexity. Believe it or not, it took time to convince me about this fact, that the third heaviest thing in a car is the cables. It's heavier than the first one, which is the gear.
The first one is the engine or the chassis, and the second is the other one, and the third are the cables in the car. What Valens able to do is to transfer a lot of protocols and power through a single cable. You see at the bottom of this page, the car has far less wires.
Also from a point of view of clean tech, of being, of saving money on gasoline or electric in the future, we are releasing tens of kilograms from the car by the fact that we allow a lot more lightweight solution. Actually this is quite a repeat of previous slide.
As you can see here, in the right-hand side, in the drawing, the multiple radars and lidars, the screens and the cameras and the screens all are part of the future vehicle. Just a little bit about numbers. Level two is when our feet is off, and then you need between two and seven cameras.
Level three is where the hands are off, then you need between five and eight cameras, between three and five radars, and between one and two lidars. In level four, where eyes are off, we're already going to five to 12 cameras, four to 10 radars, and two to five lidars. In level five, where the mind is off, that's actually it's totally done by, without us, you even have higher number.
We are the company who enables all this sophistication and technology to work. On the right-hand side of the slide, you see what it says about total available markets. Total available market is now, in 2021, about $1.6 billion, which is connectivity only. It's excluding the sensors, the radars and the lidars.
It's only the connectivity, only things of the kind we supply. In 2026, the numbers, given the level project progress, is estimated to be $7.6 billion. The 2022 highlights are based on some soft and some hard information, and I will start with just mentioning we have a record quarterly revenue.
We met all customer demand, including supply chain, which was a serious challenge, and many huge companies failed in what we were successful. We expanded the AV ecosystem. We announced the OmniVision partnership, which is the second largest after Sony in sensor. We already announced with, say, Sony before, and we work with Sony, and they even were one of the quotes mentioned before. We had the audio/video collaboration with Logitech.
We provide them the solution for using our technology in its USB peripherals, for hybrid settings and education, classroom, corporates and so forth. We increased the demand for our flagship chip, the VS3000, which is the flagship of the audio/video.
As for numbers, first quarter 2022, we grew from the relative quarter of 2021 from $13.4 million to $21.6 million. The gross profit went up from $9.5 million in first quarter 2021 to $15.4 million in first quarter 2022. Gross margin 71.3%, non-GAAP 71.8%, is now 71.4% and non-GAAP 72.1%.
The adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $4.3 million back last year, and this year first quarter is $4.1 million. The loss per share went from 0.93 and the non-GAAP 0.04 to the non-GAAP to 0.05, loss to 0.02 non-GAAP. These numbers show the increase in one year. If you look at the numbers of what we did two years ago and now, it's the company grew over in two years almost by 50%. The cash as of March 31, 2022, as I said, is ample, $165.5 million, and we have no debt.
As of the trajectory, we are remaining focused on delivering value to all our stakeholders, and this is increasing revenue year after year. You can look at what we filed when we went public. Optimizing the margins, a challenge which is a continuous challenge. Diligently managing operations is it's actually quite compared to the optimizing margins these days.
Ultimately is to achieve and continue to amplify the profitability. The guidelines that we gave for second quarter and for 2022, the revenue will be between $21.6 million and $22 million in Q2, and the whole year, $86.5 million-$88 million. The gross margin will go from 66.3%, and the whole year, 66.0%-67.3%.
The adjusted EBITDA this quarter, we think we will have a loss of between $9.8 million and $8.8 million, and the whole year, $37.2 million - $35.5 million. The summary. We are always focusing on being first mover advantage, and we set the standard in those fast-growing industries.
We are having the track records of driving increased revenues. We have very large addressable markets, both automotive and audio/video. We think that we have a very compelling financial model with clear path to profitability. Actually, that was my presentation. I want to thank you. Doron, back to you.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Gideon. We'll move to question. We have several questions. I'll start with the first one. You mentioned the MIPI A-PHY standard. Maybe if you could talk a little bit about the momentum you see in the industry in the adoption of the standard.
Excellent question. Thank you very much for this question. First, we're speaking about the automotive industry. Automotive industry speed is, I would describe it, as geological speed and definitely not the speed of a consumer electronic. Still, we see the adoption going very fast. Let's start from the beginning of the ecosystem, which is those who provide the image, the sensors.
Both Sony and OmniVision, two of the four largest sensor manufacturers, Sony is almost 50% world market share, they are adopting and showing it. Sunny Optical, one of the world's largest in making the whole camera integration, also adopted it. This is from the part of creating the image.
This is a very important part of creating the standard because this is the transmission side. The next stage are the ECUs, those who calculate and understands what the camera captured, and here we have the connection with Mobileye, the world leader in ADAS.
Obviously we speak to all the players in this market as well. Like not all of them in, of course, stage of Mobileye, but we speak and make interest to the whole market. Of the OEMs, eight of them are now in different stages of evaluation. Now, about the tier ones. People wanting to ask what about the tier ones.
Tier ones in the industry, in this industry, most of them are not the decision makers. They are quite in a scissor hold between the OEMs and the tier two. This is not valid to Denso in Japan, who have very different relationship with the Toyota than the other tier ones have the relationship with OEMs in the rest of the world.
The tier ones, all of them work with us. Some of them are already playing with the product. Although we see them less as decision maker, we make sure that all of them see and know how to work with it and make it compatible to the needs when the OEM will ask them for.
Actually, we are covering the whole ecosystem and the number of more than 30 of them are working now with the technology. I think is a proof for that. Now, just the number 30. We're in a world that in the whole world, it's about 20 OEMs and about 50 tier ones. And so the number we're speaking is representing a lot from the markets. I hope I answered what the question was referring to.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Another question is about the VA7000. There's a question if you could provide any data points to suggest that the eight OEMs evaluating the VA7000 are going well. It's been around six months now, so any update on that could be very helpful. In general, if you can kind of refresh our memory on how long this evaluation period is expected to last.
Okay. First, of course, if I cannot mention anything which is not public.
Yeah.
I guess I cannot surprise you here.
Of course.
A good try. Second, it's on six months because tape out in December, the bring-up and the EVK until it's actually. It has integration time, which is significant in this industry. As I said, the chip industry, semiconductor industry is not software industry. You don't download a chip. And a third is, what do we hear? Of course, not all of them at the same stage, but we have connections. Some of them are in more advanced stages than the others. The interest is significant among all 30. If all 30 are in a state that they already finished evaluation, of course not.
Okay. Thank you. Another question, is there any price difference between the VA7000 and the VA6000?
Well, it's not the same chip, and they do different things. The VA6000 is symmetric, the VA7000 is asymmetric, and the VA7000 has therefore a transmitter, which is very cheap and very low power, and a receiver that can receive four lanes at the same time.
Therefore, it takes more power and is more expensive chip. Actually it's quite comparing apples to bananas, very difficult. Also each of those chip in different applications have different costs. At the end of the day, actually, this is I think how far I can elaborate about this answer. I don't want to go into transfer price of a single chip to each customer.
Okay.
I do apologize, guys. As a public company, 2022 compared to my previous public company, which was the Quicktionary, some of you know it. Today, we live in a what I call legal dictatorship, so please forgive me.
Fantastic. I think we have time for one more question.
Even more.
You mentioned, I think we have, we are running out of time, but, one last question. You mentioned that Valens is already capitalizing on the synergies that exist between its audio, video and automotive business. Can you please maybe provide some examples around that?
I apologize. Can you repeat? There was a distortion in the beginning of your first sentence. Can you repeat, please?
Yes. You mentioned that Valens is already capitalizing on the synergies that exist between its audio video and automotive business. If you can provide us with some examples around that.
Yeah. First, it's not like a company that has a technology, one goes for military and one for medical. Just to start with Daimler. Daimler, the first generation is doing audio video application, which called entertainment in the car. Another example, the seven thousand already have demand in the audio video world, and there is interest to use the seven thousand for asymmetric application in the audio video world. Actually, definitely there is synergy between the two.
The synergy, I can tell you about the structure of Valens internally. The majority of employees are not distinguished to one chip. Even the marketing department is not divided. Only few employees who are facing customers are assigned, whether it's audio video or automotive. We have one company with technologies.
One technology. They build several different chips, and they. I see it like amoebas. It all the time will merge and split, merge and split, and this is, I believe, the kind of synergy. The split will not be a further split. It will be a kind of a gentle split before we merge again, and we see it again and again all the time.
Fantastic. I think now is a good time to finish. Thank you very much, Gideon, for presenting and answering the questions. I'm sure if there are any other questions we'll get, we'll refer them to you and to Dafna. I want to wish everyone a good afternoon and good night in Israel. Thank you very much.
I want to thank you, Doron, for your time. For arranging and managing it. Have a good and pleasant night, evening, day, whatever your time is now. Bye-bye.
Thank you very much. Bye-bye.