CAUTION, LONG POST!
This is copied from their IPO filing:
We have experienced significant growth in revenues in the last three years. For the years ended December 31, 2013, 2012 and 2011, our total revenues were $81.2 million, $40.3 million and $19.2 million, respectively, representing year-over-year growth in total revenues of 102% and 110% for our two most recent fiscal years. Over the same periods, we improved from net losses of $13.4 million in 2011 and $53,000 in 2012, to net income of $19.9 million in 2013. Our total revenues in the three months ended March 31, 2014 and 2013 were $35.6 million and $11.7 million, respectively, and our net loss was $19.6 million and $2.6 million, respectively. Our net income (loss) excluding the effects of share-based compensation, a non-GAAP measure, was $12.6 million and $1.9 million in the three months ended March 31, 2014 and 2013, respectively, and $33.1 million, $1.8 million and $(12.3) million in 2013, 2012 and 2011, respectively.
And More from IPO filing:
Market Opportunity
Road traffic accidents and injuries remain a major unresolved problem worldwide. The World Health Organization (the “WHO”) estimates that there were 1.24 million deaths on the world’s roads in 2010. The WHO also estimates that road traffic accidents can adversely affect 1-3% of a country’s gross domestic product. In 2011, AAA estimated that auto accidents cost the United States $300 billion annually. As a result, reducing traffic injuries has been a critical priority for governments, safety organizations and the automotive industry. Making vehicles safer has been critical to reducing road traffic injuries. The U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (the “IIHS”) cites studies finding that more than 90% of vehicular accidents are due to human factors. IIHS has estimated that if all vehicles were equipped with forward collision warning, lane departure warning, side-view assist, and adaptive headlights, as many as 1.9 million crashes involving passenger vehicles could be prevented or mitigated each year, including about one of every three fatal crashes and one of every five serious or moderate injury crashes. The ADAS market is a new and growing market. We believe that major regulatory changes, together with increased customer awareness of the benefits of active safety technology, will drive ADAS adoption to the point where the vast majority of new cars produced will be equipped with one or more ADAS capabilities.
Automobile safety is driven both by regulation and the availability to consumers of independent assessments of the safety performance of different car models, which have encouraged OEMs to produce cars that are safer than those required by law. In many countries, new car assessment programs (“NCAPs”), particularly the European NCAP, and the U.S. NCAP administered by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (the “NHTSA”), have created a “market for safety.” Car manufacturers seek to demonstrate that their new and revamped car models satisfy the NCAP’s highest rating, typically five stars, or can “tick the box” on the new car sticker. National NCAPs will continue to add specific ADAS applications to their evaluation items over the next several years, led by the European NCAP. We believe that this global rollout will lead to harmonized requirements across key geographic areas. For example, in 2014, the European NCAP increased its active safety weighting to 20% from 10%, meaning that a 5-star rating will require one or more active safety systems on each vehicle model; by 2017 active safety functions will be required to achieve a 4-star rating. Similarly, the U.S. NCAP continues to add ADAS features to its evaluation items, including forward collision warning and lane departure warnings, begun in 2011, and rearview video systems beginning in 2014. In addition, the IIHS has added collision avoidance technology such as FCW to its criteria for awarding a “Top Safety Pick+” rating.
In recent years, there has been increasing emphasis on “autonomous”, “automated” or “self-driving” vehicles. Self-driving vehicles are those in which operation of the vehicle occurs without direct driver input to control the steering, acceleration and braking, and are designed so that the driver is not expected to monitor the roadway constantly while operating in self-driving mode. Self-driving vehicles range from single applications with the driver required to continuously monitor traffic to semi-autonomous or fully autonomous driving where the driver increasingly relinquishes control. Semi-autonomous driving, under certain conditions, such as highway driving, means the driver does not have to monitor traffic continuously but must be ready to control the vehicle. Fully autonomous driving under all situations will not require any driver input. The move to the autonomous vehicle is expected to introduce significant potential economic savings as well as further reduce traffic accidents. While fully autonomous driving is not expected in the near future, we believe that there will be ongoing introductions of semi-autonomous driving capabilities. We believe these capabilities will start with hands-free highway driving that will gradually extend to other types of roadways, such as country and city driving. ADAS applications that warn, but do not perform a control function, are not, for this purpose, considered automated driving, but they are necessary for effective performance of the control functions. The key factors in the growth of autonomous driving will be increased safety, consumer demand and economic and social benefits, which we expect will subsequently be reflected in automobile regulations and rating systems. Controlling the costs of the systems is also critical as many studies have shown that consumers are interested in safety but are also very sensitive to costs.
Our Solution
Our sophisticated software algorithms and proprietary EyeQ ® system on a chip (“SoC”) combine high performance, low energy consumption and low cost, with automotive-grade standards to provide drivers with interpretations of a scene in real-time and an immediate evaluation based on the analysis. Our products use monocular camera processing that works accurately alone, or together with radar for redundancy. We expect to launch products that work with multi-focal cameras for automated driving applications with the same high performance, low energy consumption and low cost starting in 2016.
Led by Professor Amnon Shashua, our co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer and Chairman, our more than 320 engineers and other research and development personnel have a history of innovation. We believe our position as the camera-based ADAS market leader is based on the following competitive strengths:
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All applications in one camera, resulting in cost savings and greater convenience ?—? We have always understood that it was essential to develop the entire spectrum of camera functionalities in order to position the camera as the primary sensor due to its cost and packaging convenience. We provide all applications in a single system and camera. We believe this makes our solution compelling to OEMs. Further, many of our planned additional applications require a simple update to the software rather than costly and time-consuming changes to the hardware itself. We believe that as internet access becomes more available in cars, software updates may even be made wirelessly.
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Large validation datasets train and optimize our complex proprietary algorithms ?—? Mobileye’s more than 15 years of ADAS research and development, largest number of serial production models in the industry and experience with most global OEMs have yielded millions of miles of road experience data covering more than 40 countries at all times of day and in multiple scenarios — highway, country, city — across hundreds of vehicle models. Our large datasets, unbiased as to any OEM, give us the unequalled ability to train and optimize our proprietary algorithms. We can also fully validate safety functions, which is crucial in order to avoid false-positive actuations, such as an inappropriate AEB actuation. We believe that no other company in the world has road experience datasets as deep and as wide as ours.
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We seek to work with all OEMs and Tier 1 companies ?—? We seek to work with all OEMs and with Tier 1 companies. We believe our hybrid approach of working directly with OEMs to customize and validate our products and making our products available to multiple Tier 1 companies that may respond to a request for quotation (“RFQ”) for the same serial production contract offers us the opportunity for the greatest market share.
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Long-standing relationships with OEMs and Tier 1 companies provide for a leading and defensible market position ?—? Our market leadership results from many years of review and validation from 20 of the global OEMs and our relationship with most of the leading Tier 1 companies. In early 2010 our proprietary technology was in 36 car models from seven OEMs. We currently have sourcing agreements for our technology to be in 237 car models from 20 OEMs by 2016. We expect that as regulations and ratings require more active safety features, more cars and more car models will have a camera. As the leading provider of camera-based ADAS, we are well-positioned to benefit from this trend. We believe there are significant barriers to entry to the ADAS market, particularly the camera-based market, primarily based on our innovative proven technology and our continued development of more advanced and innovative technology. In addition, our leading market position, combined with the very high investment of time and resources required, makes penetrating this market challenging. We believe that it can take up to seven years from the time a company has effective technology before it could be implemented in a vehicle.
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Self-designed, cost effective EyeQ ® microchip ?—? We have designed our own microprocessor chip that has the computing power to run LDW, FCW, AEB (for vehicles and pedestrians), TSR, AHC, ACC, Free-Space Analysis, debris detection, and more ?—? at a frame rate of above 20 fps. We believe this kind of computational load is unusually high on a portable device. Our EyeQ ® SoC is capable of achieving a very high throughput at a very low power consumption and very low cost. Each new generation of the EyeQ ® SoC is many times faster than its predecessor, allowing for more and better image analysis. EyeQ2 ® was approximately six times faster than the original EyeQ ® ; EyeQ3 ® , launched in vehicles in 2015, is approximately eight times faster than EyeQ2 ® ; and we are currently designing EyeQ4 ® , which we expect to launch in 2018. We believe our system is the only one that offers the full suite of ADAS applications currently available, and many of our additional applications will only require software updates, rather than additional hardware.
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Highly scalable business model ?—? Our business model results in strong operating margins, and in 2013, we generated operating income and net income for the first time. We believe that our business can grow significantly without corresponding increases in fixed and capital expenditures because we have strong existing relationships with nearly all OEMs and Tier 1 companies, and are not reliant on traditional sales and marketing processes to develop the OEMs business.
Our Growth Strategies
We intend to expand our operations and continue to lead the ADAS market by:
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Capitalizing on regulatory and safety rating changes promoting standard feature ADAS ?—? By 2015, we believe that in order to attain a four-star or five-star safety rating, a vehicle will need to be equipped with camera-based ADAS. As a result, OEMs have been moving to adopt ADAS technology as standard equipment on the majority of new launches of existing models as well as of most new models. We believe we are strongly positioned to benefit from the increased demand for ADAS and we have already been sourced for standard feature programs by 20 of the global OEMs. Further, we work with the European NCAP, the NHTSA and other NCAPs to demonstrate the capabilities and reliability of our technology and to help ensure that they develop regulations and ratings that address the full range of benefits that we believe ADAS can offer.
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Exploiting the advantages of camera-only ADAS ?—? We believe the camera sensor is key for mass adoption of active safety features because only a camera can perform the full suite of ADAS functions at a reliability level that can ensure both real world performance in complex cluttered environments and offer acceptable false-positive levels. Unlike other sensor modalities, such as radar and lidar, which do not incorporate the full panoply of ADAS functions, camera-only ADAS reduces cost and package constraints
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Leading the development of ADAS specifically for automated driving ?—? We believe that we will be the first to supply the underlying technology to launch commercially viable semi-autonomous driving at highway speed. The move towards hands-free driving necessitates additional capabilities, such as traffic-light detection, detection of obstacles outside the driving path and significant growth of scene understanding in order to support automatic lateral control of the vehicle. We believe the camera is the sensor best suited to address the functionalities necessary for automated driving. Effective automated driving will require the coordination of multiple cameras around the vehicle to provide both a wide field of vision and protective redundancy. We have been designing new multiple cameras configurations to support the higher safety standards required for hands-free driving and have been further developing our existing AEB functions to meet even higher reliability standards. As we continue to gain experience in this area, we expect to be a leader in additional ADAS for automated driving.
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Creating additional and enhanced applications ?—? We expect to launch full-braking, camera-only AEB with multiple OEMs in early 2015. We expect to launch additional and enhanced applications in 2014 and 2015, including “no entry” sign detection, new traffic signs, animal detection, general object detection, free space or construction zone assist, traffic light detection, pothole detection and debris detection. As we continue to expand the suite of ADAS we offer, we believe our technological advantages over our competitors will continue to grow.
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Developing surround-view capabilities ?—? We are working on rear-view camera ADAS and surround-view ADAS, both of which are also critical to effective automated driving and the emerging market for automated parking functionality. The rear-view camera will also be critical to winning new serial production because in March 2014, the NHTSA issued a final rule requiring rear visibility technology in all new vehicles under 10,000 pounds by May 2018 to prevent backover accidents. Currently, OEMs offer surround-view cameras that display a bird’s-eye-view of the area around the car to assist the driver in manually parking. We are working with one OEM to launch the next generation of surround-view functionality, not merely for display but also for processing visual information to aid the function of automated parking.
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Winning additional serial productions with existing and new OEMs ?—? We intend to leverage our strong relationships with existing OEM customers to win additional serial production contracts in order to make ourselves a fundamental component of our OEMs’ global platforms. We also believe our superior product and demonstrated ability to work with OEMs and Tier 1 companies will enable us to win serial production contracts from additional global and smaller OEMs for automobiles, as well as buses, trucks and other vehicles, which may require specialized customization.
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Expanding our aftermarket product sales ?—? Our aftermarket products can be fitted for both automotive and truck uses. We believe there is significant opportunity for growth in our sales to fleet owners, fleet telematics providers, insurance companies, vehicle importers, public transportation providers, taxi operators and OEMs that may seek to offer our aftermarket product for vehicles that do not contain ADAS technology as a standard feature. We believe that we can leverage the growing public acceptance and awareness of driver safety technologies and the rising influence of “five-star” quality ratings in new car models to market our ADAS aftermarket products as well. We also seek to promote regulation that will mandate or encourage aftermarket installation of ADAS technology for certain usages, such as fleets, or certain drivers, such as young drivers.
D. (Long MBLY, VERY small position)