Aeva Technologies, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. My name is Judith, and I will be your conference facilitator. I would like to welcome everyone to Ava Technologies' first quarter of 2023 earnings conference call. During the opening remarks, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Following the opening remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, today's conference 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 AVA's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Joining on the call today are Soroush Salahian, AVA's co-founder and CEO, and Saurabh Sinha, AVA's CFO. Ahead of this call, we issued our first quarter 2023 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 most recent Form 10-Q and Form 10-K. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of AVIS 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, let me turn the call over to Soroush.

Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon, everyone. In Q1, the AVA team was focused on advancing the commercial momentum for AVA's unique 40-liter on-chip technology. And I'm happy to share that we made significant progress in a number of notable areas. I would like to highlight our key accomplishments this quarter, which are summarized on slide four. First, progress with the top 10 OEM is going well. We recently received feedback that AVA-40 LiDAR is enabling a key safety use case that was previously unattainable by the OEM. I am excited to share that we are also in discussion to deepen our relationship to include joint perception software development, leveraging AVA's unique combination of high resolution, long range, and instant velocity. we are seeing encouraging progress with other opportunities in automotive. This includes a joint development engagement with a passenger vehicle OEM looking to switch from 3D time of flight LIDAR as well as advancing to a growing number of RFQs. And third, reception for our perception platform for precision distance measurement has been quite positive. We are engaged with multiple leaders in industrial sensing to use ABUS perception platform and hope to share more later this year. I would now like to provide more color on recent business developments, starting on slide six. As mentioned earlier, we are off to a strong start with the top 10 OEM on providing a perception solution that meets their high standards of performance, safety, and scalability. The first vehicles integrating ABUF 40 LiDAR have been built, and we have already achieved important development milestones including feedback from the OEM that we successfully enabled a key safety use case for highway driving that was previously unachievable with 3D time of flight LiDAR for this customer. This was possible because of AVA's unique FMCW technology that simultaneously offers high resolution, long range, and instant velocity capability. Together with our perception software, AVA's 4D LiDAR reliably detected and classified critical objects on the road far away. This is a particularly important capability in use cases such as highway automation, where faster speeds require greater reaction time and higher sensing fidelity. I am excited to share that we're also in discussion with the OEM around the use of AVA's perception software and looking at ways to help accelerate the autonomous stack developments. This gives us further confidence around our perception software capabilities and highlights the importance of leveraging direct velocity measurements in an automated driving system. Let's move now to slide seven. As we have shared, we have been making significant progress on our engagements and wanted to provide more color on our ongoing opportunities. Our focus remains on programs for large-scale deployment and we are seeing strong interest from leading automotive and industrial companies looking to bring next-generation perception to market. This includes progressing from the RFI to RFQ stage with some of the top global passenger vehicle and commercial vehicle OEMs. And in industrial automation, we are currently in multiple discussions to deploy our perception platform for precision distance measurement applications. Many of our opportunities are with companies who have experience with LIDAR or even selected 3D time of flight LIDAR for initial pilot deployments in the past and are now increasingly interested in AVA for the next generation due to the advantages of our FMCW approach. While we may not win every opportunity, each program offers meaningful revenue potential. As an example, the passenger vehicle program opportunities we are working on target volumes well over 100,000 units per year at steady-state production. These programs have target start-up production between 2025 and 2027, and we expect award decisions approximately over the next 6 to 12 months. Turning now to slide 8, following the successful bring-up of our new final assembly manufacturing line, we are working with FabriNet to similarly expand our lighter-on-chip module manufacturing. This expansion will add capacity to support the growing interest in both automotive and our perception platform for industrial automation, with the ability to ramp further for mass production. As part of this, we will automate 100% of the LiDAR on-chip module assembly steps. This will enable higher throughput that will further bring down costs on the path towards production. We expect to complete bring-up of the new line by year-end. With that, let me turn the call over to Saurabh, who will discuss the financials in more detail.