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

Amnon Shashua: Well we have — in the West we have a reference and that’s the cost of Tesla FSD. This is why it’s so important to have a very economical, very low cost system to allow the car maker flexibility in pricing. Now, Mobileye system with the sensors is less than $2,000. So, this gives the OEM lots of flexibility in pricing considering that the Tesla FSD is $12,000 to the end customers. So, most of our engagements, the system is a standard fit. So it’s not with a take rate calculation, but it comes on every and every car. So this is the situation right now.

Joe Spak: Thank you. And then just the second one, you mentioned, just with respect to the inventory bill that occurred, you mentioned that you’re implementing some procedures to put in place to make sure you keep better track of sell-through. Can you talk a little bit more about what you’re doing there, or is this really just — you mentioned also that over the past couple years you went to full year commitment. So have you sort of pulled back on full year commitments? Is that part of that procedure?

Moran Shemesh: Yeah. So I’ll take it. So first of all, of course, I must say that we never experienced the situation before as our customers have done all through the 10 plus years period a very good job in ordering the demand. Given the recent history and the inventory issue, of course we are taking action in several fronts to add capabilities to monitoring of shipment versus demand. So the first thing that you mentioned, yeah, the order process is now back to normal. So commitment for 12 months is no longer relevant. So the commitment is only a quarter ahead. So we do get forecast, 12 month forecast, but that’s just a forecast. It’s not a commitment. So the same thing with our suppliers. So again, the industry and it’s what we’ve been saying, that the 12 month commitment is no longer relevant in 2024 and we don’t expect it to be relevant also in the future as it was specific to COVID.

We will also try to receive some input from our customers on inventory level, but it’s not that something that we have visibility to, it’s important to mention. In terms of actions, we’re taking internally. So we have established a regular process to match shipments to detailed vehicle production, both looking backwards and forward. We are putting more focus on market-based forecast that incorporate the adoption rate and OEM share trends. We always have used and updated the forecast and compared to the market, but we will now put more weight on this as another input of the customer provided forecast. We will also consider working with external vendors to build some statistical model forecast to incorporate macro level data and additional headcount to support this.

But that’s what we — that’s the steps that we are taking.

Joe Spak: Okay. Thank you very much.

Moran Shemesh: Another clarification that Dan mentioned, it wasn’t clear in my script. So the full guidance for 2024 hasn’t changed from January 4th. So for EyeQ we are anticipating 31 million to 33 million units of EyeQ shipment. A clarification since the line was down a bit. Thanks.

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

Operator: Our next question comes from Vijay Rakesh from Mizuho Securities. Please proceed.

Vijay Rakesh: Just a quick question on the company landscape again. I think — and obviously Mobileye is doing very well in the Western hemisphere, I think, especially with CARIAD gone and GM Cruise having problems as well. But in China, are you seeing — there’s been some concerns on potentially NVIDIA gaining share. Any thoughts on that? What’s driving that? Is that any price performance or just OEMs trying to diversify? Can you talk to what you’re seeing there?

Amnon Shashua: I think in China, I mentioned the in-house development in China. Those systems, they have significant proof points to still undergo. And I said about geographic scalability, economic scalability, performance scalability. On the economical side these systems are way more expensive than our system. For example, on NIO they have four Orin chips. Orin is NVIDIA owned and is a very expensive chip and they have four of them and they have ladders for reaching and the performance level is not even reaching the performance level of SuperVision. This is on the economical side. On the geographical side, the big game now is going from highway to urban. HD maps are not scaling to Urban. It’s not economically scalable. None of those in-house developments claim that they’ll be using high definition maps in Urban.

Some of them are claiming they’ll go mapless. Good luck for them. Some of them say they’ll only provide the commute feature where you record your normal commute and you’ll get performance only on that route. Mobileye has REMs. And also they want to export outside of China. There’s all sorts of regulations that Mobileye is very good at. So that’s also an advantage. So geographic performance, you want to go to eyes-off. This is the — the holy grail of all of this is an eyes-off system. Their safety is paramount. You cannot just provide a system that you feel comfortable, but you can have all sorts of safety issues there because the driver is responsible. In an eyes-off system, there are no discounts. You have to be perfect. This also adds an advantage to Mobileye.

So I think China is very dynamic which I think is a very good thing, competitive-wise and moving forward very fast with the technology. We like that very much. And I think the OEMs that are doing in-house development now are keeping all their options open. So for example, ZEEKR, they have an in-house development and they’re working also with Mobileye. We have long visibility to the continuation of work with ZEEKR.

Vijay Rakesh: Got it. And just another question on SuperVision. Obviously, there is good ramp there, but as you look out through ‘25, ‘26, can you talk to what kind of conservatism you’re embedding either on the OEM unit side or on the number of OEMs, I guess, as you build that outlook on the SuperVision side?