Cepton, Inc.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Q4 2022 SEPTAR, Inc. Business Update and Earnings Conference Call. 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. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Hal Xu, the CFO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you and welcome to Steptown's fourth quarter and four-year 2022 earnings call and business update. With me today are Junpei, co-founder and chief executive officer, and Mitch Hortini, senior vice president of business development. During the call, we may refer to our unaudited GAAP and non-GAAP measures in our earnings release. The non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered as a substitute for or superior to the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations for non-GAAP measures are included in our earnings release. I would like to remind everyone that comments made in this conference call may include forward-looking statements regarding the company's expected operational and financial performance for future periods. These statements are based on the company's current expectations and are subject to the safe harbor statements related to forward-looking statements contained in our earnings release and the slides that accompany this call. Actual results for future periods may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements due to a number of risks, uncertainties, or other factors including those discussed in the earnings release or during today's call and those described in our filings with the US SEC. We're not undertaking any commitment to update those statements as a result of future events, except as required by law. As a quick reminder, this call is being recorded, and you can find the earnings released and slides that accompany this call, as well as the webcast replay of this call at investors.cepton.com. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Jun.

Thank you, Hall, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining SEPTOM's fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings call. We will provide a business update, review fourth quarter and full year 2022 financial results, and provide our view for 2023. Starting with our business update, over the past year, we have shared with you quarterly updates on our progress towards series production. Rather than hearing from me this quarter, I will point towards to our OEM customers announcement. notably General Motors' announcement of its Ultra Cruise ADAS system on March 7, last Tuesday. GM offered the most comprehensive look into the role of LiDAR in their sensor suite in the deployment of their next-generation ADAS system designed to enable hands-free driving in 95% of all driving scenarios. Highlighting our unique LiDAR integration behind the windshield, our LiDAR produced an accurate three-dimensional view of the scene, enabling more precise object detection even in inclement weather conditions. Our LiDAR sensor is a key enabler to safely deploy GM's next-generation ADAS offering. At the end of last year, we began shipping pre-production units to our OEM customers. This year, we look to start off series production. we are excited to move yet another step closer to commercialization of our products. At CES this year, we unveiled our next-generation LiDAR, the Vista X120+. Recognized by the CES Innovation Award Program, the X120+, has a 30-degree wider field of view and 20% reduction in size and 50% reduction in height compared to our X90, which is our flagship LiDAR selected for the series production. This new sensor builds on our core MMT technology for a superior resolution and offers additional vehicle integration options with a slim design. Many OEM customers, both existing and new, are interested in testing and evaluating our new sensor for their next generation vehicle platforms. We have shipped the first samples to our global top 10 OEM for evaluation, and we expect the Vista X120 Plus series of products to be a major contender for upcoming automotive production programs. At the end of last year, we successfully taped out our next generation ASIC chip, and we expect the first samples to be available starting early this year. This new image processing ASIC is complementary to our existing industry-leading signal processing ASIC. The combination of both will be featured in our new VISTA X120+, working in unison to improve performance and significantly reduce cost. Our proprietary ASIC extends a unique differentiation to our products, offering signal-level compute, moving up to point-level compute, and eventually frame-level compute capabilities. In the year ahead, we look forward to sharing with you our full ASIC chipset roadmap. With our leadership team, it is my pleasure to announce the appointment of Dr. Dongyi Liao as the Chief Technology Officer of SEPTA. Dongyi previously served as our Senior Vice President of Applications since 2017 and is responsible for all software effort of the company. We look forward to his contributions to expanding the value of software in the growing deployment of our LiDAR. Mark McCord, our current CTO, will continue with the company to serve as the chair of Septon's newly created technical advisory board and will remain in charge of our intellectual property portfolio. Please join me in congratulating both Dong Yi and Mark in their new roles. 2023 will be a landmark year for SEPTAL as we look to transition into series production. Staying true to our principles that our sensors must achieve a balance of performance, cost, and reliability is ever more important. As our sensors enter mainstream vehicles, we're hyper-focused on delivering auto-grade quality at scale volume costs. Our Tier 1 partner, COETO, brings decades of volume manufacturing expertise to complement our technology. In the year end, our collaboration efforts will not only focus on series production execution, but winning additional automotive OEM programs, which Mitch will share more details with you next.