Aeva Technologies, Inc.

Good day, my name is Vaishnavi and I will be your conference operator. I would like to welcome everyone to ABA Technologies' first quarter 2022 learnings conference call. During the opening remarks, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. Following the opening remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touchtone phone To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded and simultaneously webcast. I would now like to turn the call over to Andrew Fung, Director of Investor Relations. Andrew, please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome everyone to ARED's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Joining on the call today are Suresh Salahian, ARED's co-founder and CEO, and Saurabh Sinha, ARED's CFO. Ahead of this call we issued our first quarter press release and presentation, which we will refer to today and can be found on our investor relations website at investors.ava.com. Please note that on this call we will be making forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These statements reflect our views only as of today. and should not be relied upon as representative of our views as of any subsequent date. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. For further discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our financial results, please refer to our filings with the SEC, including our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2021. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of AMIS performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or in isolation from GAAP results. The webcast replay of this call will be available on our company website under the Investor Relations link. And with that, I will turn the call over to Suresh.

Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon, everyone. We are off to a strong start in 2022 and continue to execute on our plan. In Q1, we achieved key milestones that moved us towards Ares II deployment and continue to broaden our commercial reach. I am excited to highlight a few of our accomplishments, which are summarized on slide five. First, we are on track for first deliveries of Ares II in late Q2. Initial units have been manufactured with initial systems and performance validation successfully completed. Second, we are building strong momentum in industrial automation. We continue to make progress on our first industrial precision product with Nikon, while also receiving significant inbound interest for additional industrial automation sensing applications, which are uniquely achievable with AVA's FMCW LiDAR on-chip technology due to superior precision. A number of developments will enable us to accelerate adoption of our unique 40 LIDAR technology. This includes being the first and only FMCW LIDAR on NVIDIA's DRIVE autonomous vehicle platform. We also continue to strengthen our team across the board, including new leadership in sales to help accelerate our go-to-market plans. Together with this, we also announced the opening of AVA's China office as we look to increase our global presence and response to the growing market demand for 4D LIDAR across a wide variety of perception applications. And fourth, the $415 million in cash at the end of Q1 reflects our disciplined approach to capital allocation and continues to position AVA well to execute on our plan to bring 4D LIDAR to mass scale. Moving to slide seven, I would like to provide more color on key business developments over the past quarter. First on ARIES II. We completed a number of important milestones in Q1 that move us meaningfully closer to our target to start delivery to customers in late Q2. This includes bringing the system manufacturing line online with initial units manufactured. We successfully completed the initial system and performance validation, and initial reliability tests on Ares II surpassed Ares I, including for temperature and ingress protection. The market reception following the unveiling of Ares II has been very encouraging. We continue to see growing consensus among automotive and non-auto customers that SNCW 40 LiDAR, with a differentiated ability to instantly measure, not infer, velocity, enables faster detection at higher confidence levels to safely bring higher levels of autonomy to a variety of perception applications, including automotive and industrial markets. ARES II incorporates the world's first 4D LiDAR on-chip solution that delivers direct velocity measurement for every pixel, together with 500 meters of range, camera-level resolution, and is designed for automotive-grade reliability. As we expand on our commercial engagements and begin deliveries of ARES II units, we expect to meet the demand for our core perception platform, leveraging our LiDAR on-chip module as well as the ARES II product. In terms of the work that remains ahead, we are focused on the bring-up of the automated assembly for our LiDAR-on-chip module over the next few months in preparation for our scale deployments and to meet the strong demand for ARIES 2. Moving to slide 9, as we announced earlier, AVA is now the first and only FMCW 40 LiDAR on NVIDIA's drive platform, which we believe will help to continue expanding our momentum in automotive. NVIDIA Drive is an end-to-end platform that enables OEMs and automotive players to develop and validate safe self-driving technology at scale. Based on our engagements with OEMs, they are increasingly looking to implement FMCW LiDAR into their next-generation programs. AVA's integration on the NVIDIA Drive platform brings our unique 4D perception to a broader group of automotive customers. And with OEM's ability to build their autonomy stack using existing NVIDIA development and software tools, we believe this will enable OEMs to accelerate the adoption of AVOS FMCW technology. Now, switching gears to non-automotive on Flight 10. We are proud to have NASA use AVOS 4D LiDAR to create a mobile terrain mapping and navigation system to support the next generation of lunar and planetary exploration. This system will help astronauts and rovers navigate and map the lunar surface, leveraging a proprietary capability that uniquely solves critical challenges on the moon. One of those key challenges is navigation in a GPS-free environment. Because AVA's FMCW technology can directly measure instant velocity for every pixel, it can also estimate its own motion, effectively serving as an independent navigation solution that provides precise positioning, even in environments where GPS is unavailable or unreliable, such as in tunnels or parking garages for automated vehicles, or in the case on the surface of the moon, where it's completely unavailable. In addition, AVOS FMCW technology is immune to optical interference, which is particularly needed on the surface of the moon, where the sun never appears more than three degrees above the horizon in certain regions, such as the lunar south pole. This exposes cameras and legacy LIDAR sensors to significant optical interference that prevents their effective use for sensing and perception. This region of the moon also has areas that are permanently shadowed or have long, persistent shadows that prohibit photogrammetry-based navigation. ABA's immunity to optical interference from the sun and ability to operate in the dark will allow astronauts and rovers to safely explore and map the lunar surface anytime, day or night. These are also critical capabilities for enabling the next generation of autonomous vehicles which need to operate safely during period of optical interference with the sun directly shining onto the sensors. We have always believed in the potential for FMCW on-chip technology to be a platform that can enable the next wave of perception for a wide range of applications beyond automotive. Central to our technology is a common core LiDAR chip module that is the same architecture we use in the ARIES platform for automotive, but tuned to deliver different performance requirements for different use cases. And NASA provides a glimpse of the broad use cases and the significant opportunities for AVA's perception platform. Let's move to slide 11, which highlights our progress in industrial automation, where there is growing demand across a wide range of applications to utilize our LiROM chip module. In particular, our ability to achieve high precision in a small chip module form factor unlocks a number of unique new opportunities, such as applications requiring precise measurement of a centimeter or less, which to our knowledge cannot be achieved with current 3D time-of-flight LiDAR solutions. To meet this growing demand and enable faster adoption, we are developing a common platform for industrial automation based on the same LiDAR-on-chip architecture used for automotive applications. And building off of the micron level precision already achieved last year, we are making good progress and target completing our LiDAR-on-chip module development for industrial automation by Q4 of this year. This timeline also aligns with our collaboration with Nikon, where we remain on track for our first product launch in 2024. Our planned common platform for industrial automation is an example of how our strategic decision announced last quarter to accelerate our shift from NREs towards scale deployment of common platforms for commercial programs is enabling us to pursue opportunities with a higher level of efficiency and agility. Now to our key objectives for 2022, which are highlighted on slide 13. We have made good progress so far this year and believe we are well positioned to achieve our key objectives for 2022. I would like to share a bit more on each one. First, on areas through deployment and qualification with customers. As mentioned earlier, we continue our focus on manufacturing and supply chain, which includes the bring up of automated assembly equipment for our LIDAR on chip module. in order to keep us on schedule for deliveries to begin in late Q2. And given the strong demand for ARIES II, we are laser-focused on our preparation to achieve this milestone. Second, on converting two additional programs towards production, we continue to progress on a number of engagements for multiple applications, including passenger vehicle, trucking, and mobility, as well as non-automotive, such as industrial automation. We believe we are on track to win programs in both automotive and non-automotive this year and see opportunity to further expand our commercial momentum as we begin Ares II and LiDAR chip module deployment. Third, on accelerating the release of our first non-automotive application. We continue to progress on our first industrial precision product with Nikon and remain confident in achieving our accelerated 2024 timeline for production launch. Beyond that, inbound interest continues to grow, and we are developing a common perception platform that utilizes our core rider-on-chip module to meet demand and accelerate adoption in the growing industrial automation market. And fourth, on preparing the supply chain and processes for commercial deployments, we continue to work closely with our supply chain partners to prepare for commercial deployment. Efforts also continue on working towards certification in automotive space and information security. And with that, I will turn the call over to Saroj to discuss the financials.