Cepton, Inc. (NASDAQ:CPTN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jun Pei: Well, this has been always — Jun here, Gus. This has been always a very efficient operating place in terms of R&D budget. And we actually have continuous tape-outs for our new ASIC chips or new products, as you also call it tape-out. But again, it’s extremely efficient operation here. We actually do not expect any slowdown in our research and development. There is — as you heard from the CES, there is a new product that just came out with a lot of improvement, a lot of changes. Some of them even goes beyond our MMT technology. All of these came out of the existing budget. So, we are just going to charge forward as is. There is no reason to waste more money, if we can just make the best use of what we have now.

Mitch Hourtienne: This is Mitch. I’ll just to add, we are building upon something that we are already launching right. So our incremental investments on new products, like we launched at CES are only a fraction OpEx wise of the original product, because we can reuse ASICs and software from our GM development.

Gus Richard: And then last one for me. I think you mentioned you’re working on a Level 4 ground vehicle. Any color as to what kind of ground vehicle that is, is it — any color there?

Mitch Hourtienne: A little bit. Yes. I mean, it operates in remote sites outside. It’ll be — more details will be revealed. It’s at a trade show this week being demonstrated. So that’s why we couldn’t comment more details until it gets revealed this week. But yes, it’s a subsidiary of a top 10 auto company, a Level 4 autonomous ground vehicle that basically takes supplies and materials to remote construction sites.

Operator: As we have no further questions, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jun Pei for any closing remarks.

Jun Pei: Okay. Just to wrap it up, it’s another quarter of good progress on our OEM program execution and certainly a very good past year for Cepton. As we move forward with higher speed and higher intensity, please pay attention to us as we strive to bring additional levels of safety to the automotive industry. Thank you.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.