Wait a minute… Why would anyone buy the shares at any price given that, after 23 years, Mobileye still loses a ton of money?
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Intel’s effort to spin off a portion of Mobileye Global via an IPO is running into a sobering reality. Mobileye, which was founded in 1999 and originally went public via an IPO in 2014, before Intel acquired it in 2017 for $15.3 billion, sells a range of products and services to automakers for their driver-assistance systems and autonomous driving technologies. Tesla was once a customer until the relationship soured.
Intel had originally targeted a $50-billion valuation for the IPO, but it has now slashed its target for the valuation by 60%, to $20 billion, and plans to sell fewer shares than originally envisioned in order to drum up some interest to generate that pop when shares start trading, according to the Wall Street Journal Monday afternoon, citing sources. Intel also delayed the roadshow for investors to Tuesday.
Unlike the autonomous-driving SPACs we’re going to look at in a moment – Embark Technologies, Aurora Innovation, and Velodyne Lidar, whose shares are in my Imploded Stocks – Mobileye has substantive revenues: $1.4 billion in 2021; and $854 million in the first half of 2022, up 21% year-over-year. But it’s losing lots of money: It generated a net loss of $67 million in the first half, according to its S-1 filing with the SEC.
Which raises the question: Why is a company that was founded 23 years ago and has $1.4 billion in revenues still losing lots of money? What is the business model of these perennially money-losing companies? Why would anyone even buy the shares if after 23 years, the company still cannot make a profit?
Mobileye said that automakers are using its products in 800 vehicle models and that its System-on-Chips (“SoCs”) have been deployed in over 117 million vehicles.
Mobileye said in the S-1 that it intends to use a portion of the funds it will raise in the IPO to repay a still blank amount “of indebtedness owed to our parent company Intel,” and “any remainder” would be used “for working capital and general corporate purposes.” For now, the plan is for shares to start trading on October 26.
Intel will retain a big stake in the company, and it will get all of the Class B shares, each of which has the voting rights of 10 Class A shares that Mobileye plans to issue.
But all the ridiculous enthusiasm of 2020 and early 2021 for money-losing companies – a hallmark of the Everything Bubble – has leached out of the market. Recent IPOs have gotten crushed in this market.
The Renaissance IPO ETF, which tracks the 80 largest, most liquid recent US IPOs – with Snowflake, Airbnb, Rivian, Royalty Pharma, Palantir accounting for about 31% of the index – has plunged by 63.5% from its high on February 16, 2021 (data via YCharts):
Still in March 2022, we were dished up amazing headlines by the financial pump media, such as: “3 Autonomous Vehicle Stocks to Buy Ahead of the Mobileye IPO,” and those three were autonomous-driving SPACs Embark Technology, Aurora Innovation, and Velodyne Lidar.
Embark Technology [EMBK], an autonomous trucking software startup, completed its merger with a SPAC in November 2021 at a valuation of $5 billion. As of its earnings report for Q2, it still had zero revenues and generated a net loss of $14 million. For the year 2021, it generated a net loss of $129 million. As of the end of June, it had $220 million in cash left to burn.
By the end of December 2021, the stock was beginning to collapse. In August 2022, just nine months after the SPAC merger, it was reduced to a penny stock. Threatened with getting delisted, it did a 1-for-20 reverse stock split (your 20 shares at $0.50 became 1 share of $10). And shares, with renewed room beneath them to drop, then continued to drop.
The 20-for-1 reverse stock split explains why the $10-per-share price before the SPAC merger in early November 2021 is now reconfigured as $200.
Today, its shares closed at $6.84. Without the 20-for-1 reverse stock split, this would have amounted to about 34 cents. But the reverse stock spilt kept the shares from getting delisted.
Since the high in December, shares have collapsed by 96%, and that $5 billion valuation at the SPAC merger has collapsed to a market cap of $157 million (data via YCharts):
Aurora Innovation [AUR], which is into autonomous truck technology, completed the merger with a SPAC on November 4, 2021. Shares then suddenly, in three days, spiked 70%, from $10 to $17.11, to confirm to everyone that this was just a crazy sh*tshow. By the end of January, shares had collapsed to $4. Today they closed at $2.16, down 87% from that high 11 months ago. Dip buyers who bought the rallies got their faces ripped off. But so be it, dip buyers take risks.
At the peak, Aurora had a market cap of $19 billion, now down to $2.5 billion.
In Q2, the company booked $20 million in revenues, down 50% from Q1, generating a net loss of $1.15 billion with a B. Over the past two-and-a-half years for which financial reports are publicly available, the company generated $2.2 billion in net losses.
But it’s not going to run out of money right away, though it’s working on it diligently. At the end of Q2, the company still had over $1.3 billion in cash and short-term investments (data via YCharts):
Velodyne Lidar [VLDR], which makes lidar technology, was spun off from Velodyne Acoustics in 2016 and obtained a $150 million investment from Ford and Baidu that year. The merger with a SPAC was completed in September, 2020. This was still the crazy-time, and so shares then spiked to $29.70, which gave the company a market cap of $4.6 billion.
On February 7, 2022, with shares down to $3.80, the stock price suddenly spiked by 50% when Amazon agreed to invest in the company and get warrants for 40 million shares. And that blew over too. Today shares closed at $0.94, down 97% from the high, and the market cap has shriveled to $205 million.
In Q2, the company had $11 million in revenues – remember, it used to have a market cap of $4.6 billion, in a market driven by buffoons – and generated a net loss of $44 million. At the end of Q2, it had $229 million in cash and short-term investments, enough fuel for one to two years (data via YCharts):
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Losses are the new profit.
There are no losses, only negative profits.
Just like negative growth.
And negative interest rates…
We’re not bankrupt. We’re just a little short on being solvent.
All this EV-related hype would not have happened without the talent of Elon Musk to create a phantasy robotaxi world and to deceive investors with autopilot and FSD.
Intel now is a year late to sell Mobileye. The B-shares are a red flag. I would pass anyway.
Because of the rising interest rates alone a big part of the valuation cut of Mobileye is justified.
GM unveiled their non-autonomous driving “Halo EV” Monday night. The 2024 Celestiq EV is ONLY $300,000, so drop your $100 bragging for bragging rights, and then GM can hype a gazillion pre-orders in the MSM that will never materialize…
At $300,000 for a GM auto, would it not be wiser and more cost effective to simply hire a personal driver instead and enjoy “Full Autonomous”???
“hire a personal driver” I’ve done that overseas and it works great. The car may not be a $300K piece of junk but you get a savvy local guide who knows the ropes and the cops. Probably work out better in urban America that a robot driver.
Brilliant comment Yort.
I wouldn’t stop at investors. Musk has managed to deceive consumers into paying 15k for “Full Self-Driving” software, where the full autonomy is always one release away from perfection and has been for years. Consumer Reports rates Tesla’s Driver Assistance package (which is what it really is) as a distant second to Cadillac’s Super Cruise, with other competitors catching up.
You are right of course. What I wanted to say is that after Musk hyped Tesla, investors also bought other EV stocks or other stocks of the sector at ridiculous prices. These stocks came all down and will continue to drop, leaving investors with the losses.
I agree, you got the part that was actually relevant to the article. I just wanted to add my less relevant grumpy old man side complaint.
Anyone see a problem with liability of self driving? If a person makes a mistake and crashes into someone, the person usually only has a limited amount of insurance and assets to pay damages. A company that is responsible for self driving is going to be rich target if driving system is defective. Seems like a business you don’t want to be in.
Agree, unless of course, they can buy liability exemption from the legislature, Congress and or the states.
Sad to agree as everything is for sale in this country and subject to civil forfeiture.
Self driving technology has been a huge disappointment. I think all of these companies have just wasted all of the money thrown at them.
I know think self driving cars are decades away from becoming a reality.
There are an order of magnitude more problems with self driving cars than anyone involved anticipated.
Tesla’s Elon Musk recently noting that self-driving is “really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero”
As a long time software and database engineer, it was pretty obvious computers wouldn’t be driving us around for decades. I have seen how the software from major players gets tested and released to the public. If you just notice the delays on your computer or phone, you will realize how impossible it will be for a computer driving at 88 feet per second (60 mph). One little hour glass and you are into a wall.
Musk may not be a criminal in a strict legal definition. But he sure defines the term “watch your wallet”.
Well, now we see that of these three stocks they have about a year to a year and a half or so of cash to burn through. And I remember a previous article that had a few imploded stocks with mere months of “runway” left. I wonder what the average amount of time is remaining on these zombie companies life support systems before they have completely burned all their money and need to liquidate. Since a lot of these imploded stocks are in the same industries, maybe they could either merge or have the healthier steal away customers from the first to fall, until you get something resembling solvency.
An old joke comes to mind whenever I think about whole industries in turmoil: Two hikers are walking through the woods when they spot a bear. The first hiker stops and immediately starts swapping his boots for a pair of running shoes. The second hiker says “what are you stupid or something? You can’t outrun a bear!” To which the first hiker says: “I don’t have to outrun the bear… I just have to outrun you.”
Maybe Velodyne, for example, doesn’t need to outrun the bear market or its cash burn but rather just outrun all these other self-driving tech companies and can soak up their customers and miraculously turn a profit circa 2024 or something. Maybe. Let’s think positive for once.
Maybe the three companies will be repackaged into one after they go under and a Re-SPAC offering will be done. LOL
You said “woods”. So don’t waste time changing out your boots. Just climb the nearest tree. Your hiking partner can try outrunning dangerous wildlife 😆🤡
Depending on what bear, they do climb trees…
On the other hand, not all bears are that dangerous.
If these shares are not baby seals, I don’t know what is.
I wonder how the marketing pitch for shares of the MobileEye IPO goes?
“FOMO” !!!!!!
Just wire the money, we’ll handle the rest.
Thee is SOOO much difference between a really great salesman and an average salesman.
Before you start a company – make sure you have first a great salesman. then a cunning CFO, and then a CEO with style. The tech crap will sort itself out.
I just re-read part of a January 2022 Forbes article which gushes with enthusiasm for the Mobileye IPO. “Judging by the design wins and relationships with major automotive companies, the IPO is likely to blast off like a rocket ship.”
What a difference 10 months can make. As Anthony and Michael Perkins observed back in 1999 when they published “The Internet Bubble”, there will come a day when profit is going to matter. That day has arrived for Mobileye. Will be interesting to see how the financial pump media spins this IPO.
“for working capital and general corporate purposes.”
Translate as “3rd qtr bonus rd and a weekend ‘due diligence conference’ in Vegas for the C suite.”
Management incentives. Can’t have the people who kept the real books get loose.
Even with the run up in interest rates the 10 year annualized return on short term t-bills averaged about 0.7%. That’s the rocket fuel for most of the stupidity.
If there is no Fed put and stock market drops to long term price to sales ratio, stock market will fall about 67% from peak value. Good news is Powell is getting it over with fast and we are 1/3 there in 9 months.
Good interview with Chris Whalen how we are heading toward S&L type crises as the mismatch in funding is going to start blowing up things. Top of the list is mortgage REITS.
By the way, according to Chris most big banks don’t want retail investor’s money, so they are going to continue paying you near zero. They are going to continue to making bigger spreads on you as interest rates go up, so don’t expect to get treated better there.
How do you short Mortgage REITs?
Autonomous driving – fairly easy if all vehicles on the road are robotic and communicate with each other. NOT easy at all if human operated vehicles and human pedestrians are anywhere in the mix.
Salad days for lawyers, consultants, accident experts, etc., etc. Hence insurance costs spike even more, along with these absurd vehicle costs. How will all this be paid for? We are in a forced march of fake progress abetted by corporate groupthink and BS stars like Musk.
“How will all this be paid for?”
Privatize the benefits for the woke elite and socialize the costs for the thrifty middle class using government enforcement as always. You should know the drill by now.
Is ‘woke’ the new buzzword we should throw into random sentences now?
But then you have the other 10% of vehicles like motorcycles, bikes, tractors and pedestrians. It’s a tough problem unless it’s built from the ground up like a special highway that allows only new technology vehicles.
Autonomous driving will require software and hardware that is totally free of programming errors. There is no program ever coded that does not have errors. There is no hardware that is totally free of a mix of parts that barely meet spec in some area. The spec range was decided upon by humans using programs that are inherently flawed. And beyond all this reality is the additional issue of “Pear” company robotic software and hardware being superior to “Peach” company robotic software and hardware and the two companies feel the other company programmers are toads. Thus the software and hardware is designed to NOT communicate back and forth. Not to mention that Mr Cheese in charge of this section of the autonomous highway has been offered a seat on the board of “Orange” company. “Orange” company is the startup recently brought to life via a SPAC and their new robotic software is currently in beta and expected to be full debugged soon. Ha!
In theory, autonomous technology doesn’t have to be perfect. It only has to be better than human drivers. And in theory, that should be easy to do because humans are terrible drivers overall (I know, you all are the exceptions), causing millions of accidents a year in the US alone, causing about 42,000 traffic fatalities a year and severely injuring several million people a year in the US alone. You’d think that they’d come up with a technology that’s better than humans on average, and I’m waiting for it, and I want it, I want my wife to be driven to work in a driverless rideshare car that’s safer for her than what she is doing, but no. She’ll be retired before that happens — that’s starting to be my concern.
Eight days ago, the hydraulic disc brakes on my bicycle saved me – by a meter at most -from getting run over by an older man who was looking directly at me as he pulled his Chevy Equinox out from a full stop at a stop sign to turn left as I was descending down a slight grade at 25 mph; approaching towards his left side.
There are too many drivers on the streets of the USA that are not fit to be behind the wheel — for many reasons.
My theory when riding my bike(s) and motorbike is that no one else can see me, and always be ready for the unexpected. Both index fingers were on the brake levers, and thank goodness, I was anticipating he’d pull out. Only the the state-of-the-art discos on my beloved ride saved my ass. On my older race bike with Campy Super Record rim brakes, I would have been toast.
It is kind of frustrating to have to ride this way, but when I ride my bicycle, the adrenaline and testosterone kick in. And as 91B20 1stCav (AUS) recently commented, “It’s combat out there.”
By the way, it was a bit warmer and quite sunny today compared to yesterday, so my ride was long and hard…
“Life is good on the northern Prairie.”
Glad you enjoyed your ride, and glad you stayed safe!
Wolf, I have a personal story where I was catastrophically affected by an automobile traffic fatality, so I’m glad you finally brought up this issue. Thanks.
Yup. We’ve had autonomous rail systems sine the 70s because of this.
What are you smoking? Communicate with each other how? The choices are the wireless phone system, wired/satelite internet or private network. All of these have small delays in service that would be fatal for a moving vechicle that must react to change with no delay.
Then there is the delay in all computers, whether they be in laptops, phones or cars. They need thinking time, and if a specific situation isn’t in the database they just stop and wait for further instructions. No, this won’t be on our roads for decades.
There aren’t even trains yet that are autonomous full time. It’s all theoretical still. My guess is that Tyson’s comment about everyone having a plan until they are punched in the face applies to the utopian vision.
There are plenty of subway systems that are autonomous without any employee on board. Notably they have sensors that react a lot faster than a human can if for example someone falls on the tracks. I rode on one of them for the first time in 2011. It was kind of spooky for me. But by the looks of it, the locals had already gotten used to it.
These three are great canaries in the ‘liquidity’ coal mine. All three valuations are at or near their remaining cash on the books. That tells me that there is an absolute dearth of liquidity out there and they are just waiting to bleed to death. All three had less than a year of cash left, and at their burn rate, are really can’t raise money from the debt markets (probably due to lack of collateral) nor the equity markets (probably due to de-listing potential to shareholder diffusion). This means that 2023 will be the year that a lot of these zombie companies finally fold.
Oh and what is Intel thinking trying to sell reduced voting shares in a junk company. Will anybody seriously buy that crap? Give me shares at pari passu or bite me and fund your failure from your own damn wallet.
“That tells me that there is an absolute dearth of liquidity out there and they are just waiting to bleed to death. ”
No, credit conditions are still absurdly loose, just not as loose as earlier this year or last year.
If credit conditions were actually “normal” (back before junk bonds became common in the mid-80’s), most of corporate America would be in bankruptcy court.
It has been 15 years since Velodyne introduced their spinning light radar device/system. But, “In Q2, the company had $11 million in revenues.” Fifteen years down the road, and that’s it?
Velodyne’s technology is to stack many lasers in a vertical column (64 lasers were first used) and spin them around many times a second. This gives 360-degree coverage. This is now done with a 16-laser “puck” system using a 905 nanometer wavelength. So in theory, this lets the car’s computer see all around the vehicle. Kind of what a driver’s eyes do (with rear-view mirrors), eh?
“Velodyne has over the years perfected the science of manufacturing these sensors at scale, and they’re proven to withstand harsh automotive grade environments.” -A company spokesman’s quote from a couple years ago.
“I’ve been drivin’ all night my hands wet on the wheel
There’s a voice in my head that drives my heel
It’s my baby callin’, sayin’, “I need you here”
And it’s a half past four and I’m shiftin’ gear
When she is lonely and the longing gets too much
She sends a cable coming in from above
Don’t need no phone at all
We’ve got a thing that’s called radar love
We’ve got a wave in the air
Radar love” -A quote from Golden Earring in 1973
It seems investors are not feeling radar love for Velodyne.
Sensors producing pixel arrays are not the problem. But yeah, Golden Earing hit the bullet to the bone. Thanks for the memory.
I’m in a tangential tech segment so see Velodyne news. Besides not having revenue, there was all sorts of drama with founder and founder’s wife using the company as personal piggy bank, then a huge struggle as the board tried to take control. Besides a crappy business, investors were stupid to buy just because of the unprofessional and maybe criminal way the company was run.
Looks like I wandered into Monument Valley.
Matt Levine at Money Stuff newsletter (Bloomberg) yesterday cited a study across all kinds of SPACS, noting that, of the ones that completed their mergers, promoters put in typically $8 million to make north of $50 million, while investors (who stuck with the stock rather than getting out with refunds) took average losses in excess of 35%, so far.
This is a money incinerator, and it is just beginning, as companies try to roll their paper into higher rates, with shrinking or no revenues.
Put it in the category with novelty haircuts, pet rocks, first-generation NFTs, etc.
I offered my pet rock in exchange for 10 share of Mobileye. They said they’d look into it but felt it was a “compelling offer.”
And there are no law against these?
TO: Wisdom Seeker
SUBJECT: Gonna need a bigger boat!
Apparently a left turn into traffic cannot still be solved. AD is dead until personal driving is banned but then still pedestrian problem remains.
“And shares, with renewed room beneath them to drop, then continued to drop.”
Beautiful! When free money and delusion aren’t flooding the world, economics becomes a lot more like physics.
As much as oil (-40%) and Nas Gas (-40%) have fallen since their peaks earlier this year, these drop certainly should help in reducing inflation rates. How much? I don’t know.
But even though services are experiencing inflation, energy is a cost of a service (gas for lawn maintenance, energy for vehicles, etc)?
Wait until winter heating bills start coming in in Midwest. HG price futures on average tripled from 2-3 years ago.
Lost $17M on sales of 1400M? That’s nothing! They’re almost profitable, which means they’re not spending enough to grow fast: a real “tech” company should have losses exceeding its sales.
I think they lost $67M in the first half of 2022 on $854M in sales, if you’re commenting on Mobileye. Mobileye had $1,400M in sales in 2021, but the article doesn’t say what the loss was in 2021. The point with Mobileye is that it has been losing money for 23 years. At some point even a real “tech” company has to show a path to profitability, or its valuation will rightfully be crushed.
The autonomous driving concept is tied to AI chip technology which has taken a setback since Covid supply chain problems and that is probably what is weighing on the cryptocurrency market (bitcoin mining) and maybe equities as well. I just don’t see how destroying the economy in a vain attempt to reduce inflation through dubious 1980 economic comparisons is going to help anyone, least of all the incumbency. I digress.
Embark Technology : 0 Revenue and 120M$ Loss (5B$ Market value)
Mobileye: 1.5B$ Revenue and 100M$ loss (16B$ Market Valued?)
Well…I don’t see any real correlation. If their revenue continues to grow (as Mobileye does) it’s normal to have a loss…(Marketing and Research)
Intel needs money to grow the chip business and increase its foundries. I consider it a wise choice. Time will say if they were wrong. We are in a Bear Market now…when the Bull comes back, Mobileye’s valuation will go up. That’s why Intel is selling fewer stocks.
Gelsinger is a good Ceo and I like him cause he loves what he does. Time will talk…
I’ve worked in the AV/AD Sector. As I’ve stated on here before, it’s a monumental task, current hardware and software are NOT up to it. Maybe in 10-20 years, but we don’t give ourselves enough credit as humans. We are amazing supercomputing pilots/drivers, and some lidar, radar and “ai” tech will not be replacing human talent and ability any time soon.
Driver assistance systems that begun increasingly more sophisticated. This technology does not necessarily have to replace drivers in the foreseeable future. As indeed the fighter jets. The technology implemented over the past 30 years is huge and worth billions of dollars. The pilots (Top Gun) continue to exist.
The elephant in the room with Autonomous Vehicles is the cost and size/power consumption of the equipment.
Your average AV is equipped with between $20k and $75k of computer hardware. It takes up almost all of the available cargo space in your average car. And the car has to be modified to be able to provide enough power to run the computers.
Right now, the cost difference between the AV version and the human driven version is something like 4 to 1. And that’s just the capital cost of the vehicle itself. When you include the support staff, infrastructure and technical staff who are writing/maintaining the code, it would be massively cheaper to simply hire a human driver for every one of the A-vehicles on the road and be done with it.
Google/Waymo is pretty much the state-of-the-art in AV, and I watched a recent YouTube video where one of their cars was so flummoxed by a traffic cone in the middle of the road that it froze in place and refused to move.
About five years ago, I was driving in Mountain View, CA and saw one of Google’s AV cars fail to navigate a routine traffic obstacle: There was an auto transport semi-truck parked on the street in front of a car dealership. It was parked partially on the bike lane, and partially on the rightmost car lane. The rest of the traffic either switched to the left lane, or simply hugged the left side of the right lane and squeezed by. The Google car stopped and sat there, blocking the entire right lane. It did this for a couple of minutes before the human inside took control and navigated it around the obstacle. Unfortunately, when I compare the driving I saw in this recent YouTube video to the behavior of five years ago, it hasn’t improved much. This tells me that the current technology has reached it’s limits and it simply isn’t good enough.
Bingo Cynical Engineer. I worked on a project recently that was using small robots to navigate an office space. The amount of computing power and battery power required was immense, and it severely limited the capability of the platform. Also it was very expensive.
ADAS/Driver assistance is awesome. Rented a low end Kia on vacation last week, and it was impressive how far it’s come for a $20,000 car. This, in my opinion is where the future lies. Lane assist, and safety features are very nice to use on a long road trip, and it works very well these days. It’s a far cry from full self driving though, which when I rode in a car doing that, was. . . terrifying.