Mobileye Global Inc. (NASDAQ:MBLY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Dan Levy: Great. Thank you. As a follow-up, somewhat related, maybe you could just provide us with an update on the competitive landscape in China and appreciate that some of the earlier engagements you’ve had with SuperVision are based on China but we also know that China is the market where there is right now the most rapid development cycle. There are also data barriers within China. So to what extent are you — maybe you could talk about share trends or win rates in China. And to what extent are you as competitive in China as you are in the West?

Amnon Shashua: Okay, so actually it’s going to be a lengthy answer, so bear with me. It’s really a complicated landscape. So I’ll start with West. With the western OEMs, we have about 90% share in eight out of the 10 biggest OEMs. This is true not only today, but given all the design wins to date, this is true for the foreseeable future. Actually, given all the current design wins, our market share is growing. Now in China, there are a number of OEMs where we have above 90% market share, including some local OEMs like Chery. There are also some local OEMs where we have around 30%, and some which we do not have a relationship yet. So for example, at BYD, we have 30% market share, and with Changan, we have zero. So Chinese OEMs growth is faster than our market share growth.

BYD and Changan are growing fast. Now in terms of competition, there’s the low-end and high-end. At the low-end ADAS, we have some supplier competing at the very low-end solutions, very low cost, very low-end solutions. And at the high-end, we have the in-house development of OEMs. So at the low end, competing systems suffer from a large performance gap on the very basic features like autonomous emergency braking, for example. The performance will never pass any Western regulator. For them to catch up, they’ll need to have more expensive system which will reduce their competitive offering. Moreover, we are adding REM to the low-end ADAS to provide a cloud-enhanced system and Chery just announced that in two months, car models with Mobileye Cloud Enhanced solution will be launched.

This will add more pressure on our competitors by creating a moving target for single camera ADAS. For the high-end systems, those are developed in-house by some OEMs, there are still significant proof points to pass, I’ll say along three axis. There’s geographic scalability, performance scalability, and economic scalability. So geographic-wise, there is this move from highway to urban. This is a big challenge because high definition maps provided by map makers are done manually, do not scale to urban. Mobileye has REM. This is a big advantage. Also, geographic-wise, OEMs want to export systems outside of China and meet regulation. Mobileye has an advantage there. Performance wise, the goal is to move from eyes on to eyes off. This is a significant step-up in performance and focus on safety.

Mobileye has an advantage there. Economical wise, in-house systems are more expensive and require more sensors to reach a reasonable performance level. Mobileye has an advantage there. So, Chinese, I think the Chinese market is the most interesting and dynamic market to date. And I think we’re doing well there and our market share will grow but the growth of the market is faster than our growth of the market share and I hope we’ll catch up soon.

Dan Levy: Thank you.

Dan Galves: Thank you, Dan. Next question, please.

Operator: Our next question comes from Itay Michaeli from Citi. Please proceed.

Itay Michaeli: Great. Thanks, everybody. Good afternoon. Just two quick questions for me on the pipeline. First, hoping you can kind of dimension what portion of the pipeline is both looking at SuperVision and Chauffeur combined, just given the momentum you’ve seen with Chauffeur recently? And second question, since the big announcement at CES, have you seen an increase in activity and conversations, including maybe with the second wave OEMs you described in the last earnings call?

Amnon Shashua: Yes, Nimrod will take it.

Nimrod Nehushtan: Yeah, so regarding the first question, it depends. In some of the engagements we have, we have parallel engagements for both SuperVision and Chauffeur with the same OEM. This is in the case where the OEMs are interested in a few car models with which maybe they want to have different offerings for different segments in the market, different price levels of cars. On the other hand, there are some OEMs who might be more interested in specific product offering and maybe to start from Chauffeur or to focus on hands-off for their cars because of whatever considerations they have. So we can say we have a mixed bag of engagements in general. We see a good mixture of both Chauffeur and SuperVision in our pipeline engagement. And I think regarding — what was your second question, please? You can just repeat?

Itay Michaeli: Just since CES, any increase in activity and engagement with the second wave?

Nimrod Nehushtan: Yeah, so I think one of the interesting outcomes of CES is that we have had just over a couple of weeks after CES, we already have, I think, three engagements within our pipeline that specifically want to focus on evaluating DXP hands on, to actually start working technically on DXP, to start experimenting with it, to start feeling the tools, seeing how they can influence the driving experience. And this is just after a couple of weeks since we have announced it for the first time. So it is a very promising start to this promotion process that we are executing.

Itay Michaeli: Perfect. That’s very helpful. Thank you.

Dan Galves: Thanks, Itay. Next question, please.

Operator: Our next question comes from Joe Spak from UBS. Please proceed.

Joe Spak: Thanks everyone. You talked a lot about the progress on the SuperVision program wins. I was wondering if you could shed a little bit of light on how — when you have those conversations with customers, how they think about implementation on those programs or take rates? Like, are they convinced they can charge for these features or, Amnon, you mentioned that as you sort of get to more higher end features like Chauffeur where you get time back, maybe do we need features like that to see — to really see significantly higher levels of adoption and willingness to pay?