Ouster, Inc. (NYSE:OUST) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Brian Dobson: That’s excellent to hear. Thank you for that color. Just one final question. In the filing, you have some pro forma revenue numbers for €˜23 for Velodyne and for Ouster. And then you have the combined entity. And it seems like there is some leakage between those three numbers, and that’s probably due to, call it, redundant product lines or redundant customers. The first quarter guidance you gave, that’s just for stand-alone Ouster, right? Would you expect combined results to be below that range?

Mark Weinswig: Well, I appreciate the question. So for the stand-alone guidance that we’re giving for the $15 million to $17 million of revenues, that includes any Velodyne products that we are shipping out after the merger date of February 10. So that would include the existing Ouster business plus, the VLP-16, the VLP-32 and the VOS-128 product lines from Velodyne.

Brian Dobson: Okay. Alright, thanks very much.

Operator: We will go now to not to Tristan Gerra of Baird.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi, this is Tyler on for Tristan. Thanks for taking the questions. Could you provide an update of the state of demand in China? Do you expect a second half recovery? And then also, could you just remind us what your revenue exposure is to China?

Angus Pacala: Thanks for the question. Yes. So we’ve never broken out the China revenue base. We’ve invested significantly in the region. There is a ton of great business to be had in APAC as a region overall. We do have a presence in China, both Velodyne and Ouster did, and we continue to have a presence there. We have a lot of great customers within China in the robotics and automotive space where there is been a ton of investment in kind of robotaxi and adjacent industries. But we’re also investing significantly into major other Asian markets like South Korea, Japan, Australia, Singapore. And obviously, we have a big physical presence in Thailand as well with our manufacturing there. So we’re expecting to continue to invest in the entire region. It’s an important region for us. We haven’t broken out the demand and don’t expect to, but really feeling good about the APAC region and their performance in 2022 and what we’re expecting from them in 2023.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Great. For my follow-up, you mentioned that 1Q €˜23 ASP should go back to historical levels. But how should we think about price declines expected for the rest of the year and then also compare that with your expected cost declines for the year.

Angus Pacala: Yes. So just stepping back, the fundamental kind of premise of the digital lidar sensors that our COGS are going to continue to decrease faster than our ASPs continues to be our expectation. Mark mentioned some of the headwinds that we will have as a part of the merger, as a part of the REV6 to REV7 transition, those are near-term effects. But we do expect that REV7 will continue to march down this COGS trajectory while ASPs stay more stable. And so we noted that ASPs were lower in the fourth quarter due to some higher volume, lower ASP customers, but we’ve already seen ASPs rebound for the REV6 products and the REV7 products are already coming in at higher ASPs, premium ASPs, than the REV6 products by design, given their premium performance.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Thanks, again.

Operator: Thank you. We go next now to Kevin Cassidy at Rosenblatt Securities.

Kevin Cassidy: Yes. Thank you for taking my questions. Just congratulations on the book-to-bill ratio that you had in 2022. When you’re looking at the first quarter, are you continuing that type of book-to-bill ratio, assuming $16 million in revenue?