Ouster, a developer of LiDAR sensors, announced its Q4 2022 results today. The company has shipped over 2,950 sensors in Q4 2022 (up 23.0% YoY from Q4 2021), bringing the total number of sensors shipped to date to more than 18,500 across all its verticles, including automotive. Ouster also completed its merger with incumbent LiDAR maker Velodyne in February 2023 and revealed that it is on track to realize USD 75 million in annual cost savings by the end of the year, resulting from the merger. The company looks to achieve about USD 50 million of this annual cost savings by the end of Q1 2023 itself.

The company reported USD 10.9 million in revenue during the quarter (down 7.7% YoY). With this, the company closed the year with revenue of USD 41 million in 2022 (up 22.2% YoY), reaching the lower end of the revenue guidance provided in Q3 2022.  

The company’s gross margin fell 13.3 percentage points YoY to 16.8% in Q4 2022, owing to discounts on some large-volume sales and spending on ramping up production of its new REV7 sensor platform. This cascaded down to negatively impact the operating loss, which widened to USD 42.0 million in Q4 2022 (vs. a quarterly loss of USD 34.7 million a year ago). The worsening of the operating loss was also supported by an increase in general and administrative expenses (up 32.4% YoY in Q4 2022). Its operating loss for the full-year 2022 stood at USD 145.4 million, 1.5x the loss incurred a year ago.

Ouster expects to generate revenue of USD 15 million–17 million in Q1 2023, this is excluding revenue from Velodyne products prior to the merger. This implies revenue growth of 1.8–2.0x YoY from Q1 2022.