Luminar Technologies, Inc. ("Luminar" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: LAZR), the global leader in automotive lidar hardware and software technology, today announced a quarterly business update and financials for the first quarter ended March 31, 2021.
"We’ve remained relentlessly focused on execution, hitting our key product, commercial, production and financial targets so far. This puts Luminar on track to meet or beat our 2021 company-level milestones from the beginning of the year, as we continue to extend our technology, product, and market leadership positions."
— Austin Russell, Founder & CEO
Execution: Product, Industrialization, and Series Production
Luminar continues to scale its series production capabilities. Today, Luminar officially announced its manufacturing partners Celestica and Fabrinet, while the first Iris units were produced on Luminar’s automated line in Celestica’s automotive-certified facility in Monterrey, Mexico.
Luminar also continues to advance validation of Iris and development of its Sentinel software as it moves up and beyond the foundation of lidar, reinforcing the Company’s transition to a system-level autonomous vehicle company. Following the introduction of Sentinel last quarter, Luminar kicked off the next phase of its software development through its partnership with Zenseact. Iris lidar data has been collected to train and optimize the performance of Luminar’s perception software, and Luminar received the green light from German authorities to proceed with Sentinel full-stack solution development and testing on public German roads.
Customer Adoption: Commercial Wins from the Ground to the Sky
Since the 2020 year-end business update less than two months ago in March, where Luminar announced SAIC and detailed its new partnership with Zensact, Luminar achieved commercial wins with two new customers:
- Airbus UpNext: Airbus SE’s subsidiary UpNext – which was created to give future flight technologies a development fast-track by building, evaluating, maturing and validating new products and services that encompass radical technological breakthroughs – is integrating Luminar’s lidar technology into its Vertex platform to enable safe, autonomous flight. This partnership marks Luminar’s first foray into the nearly $1 trillion aviation industry and is aimed at increasing air safety and enabling autonomous operation with automatic obstacle detection.
- Pony.ai: Luminar’s Iris will be seamlessly integrated into Pony.ai’s next-generation autonomous driving platform, featuring a multi-sensor 360-degree configuration and enabling the vehicles to operate safely and reliably in complex urban environments. Pony.ai is set to start deployment of a 200-vehicle robo-taxi fleet in urban settings across five cities in China and the U.S. The partnership is developing a new integrated sensor design that signals a shift from vehicle testing to advanced development and production scale.
Major 2021 Milestones: On Track of Ahead of Schedule for Each High-Level Milestone
Luminar is on-track to meet or exceed each of its key 2021 milestones set forth at the beginning of the year and shared in its fourth quarter 2020 business update:
- Iris Industrialization for Series Production:Luminar successfully hit its major industrialization milestone with manufacturing partners and producing the first Iris lidars off the line, and remains on track to hit the C-sample phase before year end.
- Software Development: Luminar collected Iris data and trained its perception software, enabling perception with Iris. Luminar also received approval from Germany for Sentinel development and testing on public German roads, and remains on track for its Sentinel alpha release at year-end.
- Commercial Programs:So far this year, Luminar has won more commercial programs than expected, with the recent Airbus UpNext, Pony.ai, Zensact, and SAIC wins in the past few months. Luminar expects to increase its "major commercial win" guidance at its next quarterly business update call.
- Forward-Looking Order Book: Luminar has been targeting growth of 40% from its year-end 2020 forward-looking order book of $1.3 billion, driven by major commercial wins. Luminar expects to increase this growth guidance at its next quarterly business update call.
- Maintain Strong Liquidity and Cash Position:Luminar remains on track for its target of achieving a cash position at year end 2021 equal to or higher than its position at year end 2020. This is enabled in part by Luminar successfully raising $154 million from warrants in the first quarter. Luminar’s cash position currently stands at $610 million.
First Quarter 2021 Financials: Strong Revenue Growth and Efficient Cash Management
Revenue for the first quarter was $5.3 million, a year-over-year increase of 37% compared to the first quarter of 2020 and a sequential 118% increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2020.
GAAP net loss for the first quarter of 2021 was $(75.9) million, or $(0.23) per share, basic and diluted, compared to GAAP net loss of $(15.6) million, or $(0.12) per share, basic and diluted, for the first quarter of 2020.
Non-GAAP net loss for the first quarter of 2021 was $(27.0) million, or $(0.08) per share, basic and diluted, compared to non-GAAP net loss of $(14.1) million, or $(0.11) per share, basic and diluted, for the first quarter of 2020.
Cash and investments were $610.3 million as of March 31, 2021, compared to $485.7 million as of December 31, 2020, and included $154 million raised from exercises of warrants and a cash spend (operating cash flow less capital expenditures) of $28.9 million during the quarter.
Financial Guidance: Luminar remains on track to achieve its full-year 2021 guidance for revenue of $25 to $30 million and net cash spend of approximately $140 million.
Luminar stock dips after mixed Q1 report.
