Mobileye at Oppenheimer Conference: Strategic Insights on Autonomous Tech

On Tuesday, 12 August 2025, Mobileye Global Inc (NASDAQ:MBLY) participated in the Oppenheimer 28th Annual Technology, Internet & Communications Conference. The discussion, led by COO Dan Gelps, highlighted both the company’s advancements in autonomous driving technology and the challenges it faces, such as geopolitical uncertainties. Mobileye’s strategic focus remains on technological maturity and customer adoption, despite market dynamics.

Key Takeaways

• Mobileye is advancing autonomous driving technology, focusing on production programs with Volkswagen.
• The company reported strong Q2 results and provided constructive Q3 guidance but remains cautious about Q4 due to geopolitical factors.
• Mobileye shipped 18.1 million chips in the first half of the year, with a second-half guidance of 16.4 to 17.4 million chips.
• The company is committed to sensor system redundancy and improving meantime between failure (MTBF) with imaging radar.
• Mobileye maintains a strong relationship with Intel, participating in a share buyback program.

Financial Results

• Mobileye posted robust Q2 financial results, reflecting positive momentum.
• The company has issued constructive guidance for Q3, while Q4 forecasts are cautious due to geopolitical uncertainties.
• In the first half of the year, Mobileye shipped 18.1 million chips, with expectations of 16.4 to 17.4 million in the second half.

Operational Updates

• Mobileye is focused on executing its programs with Volkswagen, targeting a supervision design freeze by early 2026.
• The drive software freeze is planned to support European certification in 2025, with potential U.S. commercialization in 2026.
• The company has made significant strides with imaging radar, enhancing MTBF in test vehicles.
• Mobileye participated in Intel’s share sale through a buyback program, reinforcing its strong relationship with Intel.

Future Outlook

• Mobileye anticipates more harmonized product cycles in the coming years.
• There is growing interest in a one-stop-shop solution for vehicle categories.
• While the China market presents lower performance valuation, it remains stable.

Q&A Highlights

• Customer education on autonomous driving complexity remains crucial.
• OEMs are replanning portfolios, causing delays, but expectations are stabilizing.
• New AI developments have created market confusion, necessitating explanations of Mobileye’s engineered structure.
• Tier 0.5 relationships with OEMs, like Volkswagen, are seen as valuable for iterative development.
• Strategic clarity is increasing among OEMs regarding vehicle segment requirements.

Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for a more detailed understanding.

Full transcript - Oppenheimer 28th Annual Technology, Internet & Communications Conference:

Colin Rusch, Lead for Oppenheimer’s Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization team, Oppenheimer: Hi, everyone. My name is Colin Rusch. I am the the lead for Oppenheimer’s Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization team. We’ve done an awful lot of work in and around physical industrial AI, we’re thrilled to have, Dan Gelps, now COO of Mobileye here, to discuss, the platform. So, Dan, you’ve had a couple of stints with Mobileye, and have, you’ve seen significant evolution of the platform.

Platform, you know, can you just set a baseline on where the company is from a technology perspective, as it enables the autonomous future?

Dan Gelps, COO, Mobileye: Yeah. So, I mean, I I think that, you know, where we are from a technology standpoint, kinda where the customer base is is, like, a little similar to kinda where we are we where we were back in 2010, 2011, 2012, where we’re trying to advocate, you know, use of camera for ADAS technology, for improving safety levels, for saving lives, providing warnings. But there was no really evidence of consumer acceptance of this and kind of the OEMs were lot COVID-nineteen of year. Pandemic. And

Colin Rusch, Lead for Oppenheimer’s Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization team, Oppenheimer: the

Dan Gelps, COO, Mobileye: 12 and you started to kind of feel some of the consumer acceptance of that technology, you know, and and some six some early success in monetizing it, you know, really the dam broke. And then ADAS adoption started kind of coming in with regulation and kind of adoption rates went from nothing up to now they’re like 75%. So we feel like we’re in kind of a similar situation where the OEMs need to make decisions based on somewhat like not a lot of information, not kind of understanding where the technological maturity is going. Where are we right now? Like, we’re fully focused on the execution of the Volkswagen programs.

And importantly, like using technological progress there to further demonstrate our maturity to other OEMs. Right? So so testing and development work for supervision, chauffeur, drive, It’s now happening with production intent vehicles utilizing production level hardware, much of the next generation IQ six high based software stack. The design freeze for the supervision program occurs in early twenty six. That’s to provide time for kind of full vehicle validation and homologation work throughout ’26 in front of the launch.

We’ve had multiple executive demos in Europe and China, including recently that continue to illustrate superior performance against other they continue to kind of evaluate us against other kind of benchmarks, competing systems. Chauffeur is on a similar track, just a few months behind. Finally, on drive, like, we continue to hit all of our targeted KPIs, including our m our meantime between failure targets. Software freeze, you know, in order to support the European certification process happens at the ’5. We feel like we’re going to be at the point where we can start to commercialize during the ’6 in The U.

S. Because of regulations that has to wait till the ’6 in Europe. But, yeah, we’re we’re feeling very good about our ability to put up, like, multiple more pro proof points in the coming months and and across next year.

Colin Rusch, Lead for Oppenheimer’s Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization team, Oppenheimer: Fantastic. And I guess, you know, as we see investors trying to keep pace with the rapid evolution of AI technology, can you talk about Mobilize Compound AI approach and how is leveraging simulation test vehicles, inference, and pushing reliable functionality forward. You know, I think one of the the trickier things you talked about, some of the the KPUs and then the, you know, the the meantime between failure. But I think there’s a lot going on from a technology perspective that’s happening that doesn’t necessarily end up in the public realm and can be Yep. Challenging to digest for investors that are, you know, really dealing with a high volume of information and and trying to kinda simplify things as best they can.

Dan Gelps, COO, Mobileye: Yeah. No. I mean, I I think in in some ways, like, you know, Tesla has an advantage here because because they’re, you know, connected with all their vehicles, because they’re producing the vehicles themselves. Like, they don’t have to wait for, like, a production breakpoint to deploy new technology and show significant improvement. You know?

And and they did that a year ago. Like, they showed significant improvement, you know, through the use of transformer based networks and end to end AI. You know, it seems to have plateaued, for a while, but, you know, they they did show that improvement, and that’s that’s an important proof point, you know, not just to consumers, but, you know, to other OEMs as well. We you know, the our kind of, you know, production proof point in the Zeeker vehicles was based on I q five kind of first generation technology. That chip was designed, like, in 2016, 2017, 2018.

You know, the software was designed twenty twenty, twenty twenty one before you really had the benefit a lot of of a lot of these kinda new AI architectures. So, you know, just to address the value of new AI, like, we we’ve seen tremendous progress in our software stack software stack driven by the use of end to end transformer based networks, both per perception and driving policy. These are replacing a lot of the kinda convolutional neural network based software that was in the first generation of supervision. It’s all particularly helpful with comfort. We don’t necessarily see sort of the pure safety related improvements just based on technology, and that’s what makes us confident that, you know, more of an engineered structure that we’ve been kinda, you know, planning, you know, forever.

Right? Or, you know, that that we’ve been kinda utilizing forever and continue to see major benefits to is important to reaching the necessary precision levels, which are far away from whatever’s out on the road today. Right? Like, maybe you can do 500, a thousand miles, you know, but what about 500,000 miles or a 100,000 mile or a million miles? So, you know, we think that that that engineered structure, you know, has a lot to you know, it creates benefits through redundancy.

So if you’re dealing with edge cases or or even, like, challenging but common occurrence occurrences, like, the goal is not to treat them as edge cases, but to figure out ways to bring them into the normal distribution of scenarios. Right? So to make them normal. You know, how do you do that? You you create a structure where you have multiple multiple softwares, multiple sensors evaluating that scenario in parallel.

And then you have logic that’s in place to decide which system to rely on in that specific case. And it’s pretty complicated to do. We call it primary guardian fallback, and and it’s a big part of our Compound AI system. On the decision making side, you know, again, like, you can use pure AI, end to end AI for, you know, decision making software to make suggestions about what that next action is. Our belief is, you know, that next action proposed will be right in ninety nine percent of the cases, but what about the one percent?

So if you have a kind of a a logic based, mathematical based, you know, kind of guardrail on top that’s verifying that this decision is not going to cause an accident. You know? And if it is, then you go to the next decision we see as a way to boost precision significantly. We’re using simulation in, you know, in a lot of cases, we don’t use photorealistic simulators. We kind of base it on, you know, REM data.

So we create we can create like a realistic environment based on our crowdsourced mapping data and then have, you know, have vehicles interact within that environment, you know, and go through, you know, 10,000,000, 20,000,000 scenarios, like, overnight. So we’re making heavy use of simulation as well.

Colin Rusch, Lead for Oppenheimer’s Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization team, Oppenheimer: There’s a lot that I wanna unpack there. Dan, you know, I know we had some questions that we wanna go, but I would love to go back to the customers here. Right? I mean, so part of this is customer education. We’ve seen this cycle of customers getting involved with autonomous, wanting to do their own thing, right, and then realizing that it was too big a problem that they could they they didn’t have the capability in house to do this.

And so they’re coming back to technology providers. And I’m curious about the kind of the state of those customers in terms of their education level and understanding the complexity and their ability to deal with that complexity in an environment where you’ve got increased regionalization. You’ve got a a drivetrain transformation that’s happening at kind of faster, slower rates depending on which geography you’re in. And then the real question is, what’s the value to the consumer and who actually is the consumer? I mean, it’s it’s a lot of crosswinds in the space.

And so, I guess, can you give us a sense of, you know, how those customers are wrapping their heads around the, you know, the depth of the challenge and how they’ve come back to work with you. And, you know, we’ve had this theory around a tier 0.5 in many cases, and it seems like you have some of those close working relationships with folks like VW where you’re doing iterations with them in a little bit closer way. So just curious if if we start moving in towards that tier 0.5 as we get into, you know, just some really vicious technology cycles here soon.

Dan Gelps, COO, Mobileye: Yeah. So, I mean, I I think there’s a lot in that question. So, you know, like, what is the reality? The reality is the OEMs have been through kind of a a real, kind of extended, you know, replanning of their portfolios. Right?

And, you know, I think there’s different themes. Right? There’s the powertrain theme, but there’s also, like, the architecture consolidation theme. Right? And so for our software defined vehicles that, you know, have less ECUs and kind of more consolidated ECUs than previous platforms, Were they gonna be all EV?

Like, maybe they were at first. Now they’re not. Right? But that delays everything. Right?

So I I think that, you know, we’re we have seen, you know, these sort of targeted platforms that are supposed to be packed with technology. You know, maybe a couple of years ago, they were planned for mid twenty six. Now they’re planned for ’28. But it seems to be stable. Right?

And so, you know, that creates some level of pressure to make decisions now to have advanced technology in these vehicles that are launching, you know, late twenty seven into ’28. I I think that’s one thing that that’s that’s happening. I think you are I mean, you know, in kind of recent updates I’ve gotten, there is more appetite. You know, there’s also become you know, if you go back two, three years, like like, the target was basically supervision. Right?

Tesla FSD is out there. It’s eyes on. It’s hands free, you know, getting a lot of press. Like, you know, no one knew that the penetration rate was relatively low at that point. Kinda now they do, but, like, this is this was the target.

Right? And and then, you know, once we get that in place, like, we can start to add some sensors and maybe get to eyes off. You know, maybe something’s gonna happen in robo Taxi, but, like, let’s start with this. I think over the last two years, what we’ve seen is more segmentation where okay. Well, you know, yeah, maybe maybe a kind of an eyes on hands free for premium brands, and maybe that’s scalable to eyes off at some point.

But what are we gonna do about the mass market vehicles? We really can’t put, you know, $171,800 dollars of cost into a, you know, a $40,000 car or a $50,000 car. Like, we don’t have the confidence of monetization to do that. But can we get to, a very cost efficient highway hands free driving that also helps us to, you know, meet, meet, you know, future safety standards. So Surround ADAS has become, you know, kind of a lot of traction to serve that area.

You know, Robotaxi, you know, all of a sudden there’s like consumer proof points that, you know, people are preferring, like, driverless vehicles rather than Uber. So, you know, that’s created sort of a rekindling of, like, what are we gonna do as an OEM? So we’re seeing kind of kind of more clear segmentation of what OEMs wanna do and being able to be a one stop shop like we are has advantages there. So we we feel like that’s kind of a newer trend that makes sense for us. On the negative side, I think, like, new AI has created a lot of noise and a lot of, confusion, especially, like, the at the upper executive levels.

And it’s also allowed for, you know, more startups to pitch themselves, right, as, hey. Well, now that you’ve got new AI, you know, this has become, you know, relatively easy, and we can just use the existing hardware in the car. And, you know, all we need is data and lots of compute and kind of it’ll teach the car how to drive. I think that affects, you know, upper hearing that from, you know, Jensen or hearing that from some start up, like, it affects, the the executive mindset. And so, you know, we have to go in and kind of explain why an engineered structure is, you know, leads to better precision levels and more traceability and more predictability.

So, you know, we feel like we’re we’re we’re in good shape, but I I think it’s created some noise.

Colin Rusch, Lead for Oppenheimer’s Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization team, Oppenheimer: And okay. So I guess at at some point, I mean, decision makers need to harmonize, you know, product cycles and technology cycles and understand what those are. And so, I guess, if you had to characterize this latest education cycle, you know, kinda where we where are we in that that education cycle? Because it you know, if we go back to 2016, you know, you know, we had this kind of autonomy was the future suddenly. Right?

And then that drove, you know, a lot of the interest in the EV powertrain because you needed to have a big battery to run the computer. Right? And that was part of what happened with EVs. And then fast forward here, you know, if we’re we’ve got this AI disruption where folks are talking about these massive computers and not necessarily, you know, kind of a more focused, you know, task driven AI learning cycle, which actually kind of accumulates. And we’re very much in the camp of start small and grow rather than boil the ocean with these AI compute.

Like, where are we at in terms of some of the the decision makers understanding the scope of the problem, how to attack the problem, and starting to harmonize technology investments with product cycles?

Dan Gelps, COO, Mobileye: Yeah. So I I think, yeah, it’s it’s it’s a great question. Like, the product cycles, you know, do feel more harmonized than they did a couple of years ago. Like, you know, trying to kinda push, you know, a you know, push a string to get a decision made when, you know, the vehicles that were targeted weren’t clear. Like, you know, it wasn’t gonna happen.

So now that the product cycles are more clear and they’re, like, a little bit more diverse by powertrain, you know, we think it’s good for us, especially for this, like, current cycle where you’re trying to get product on the road for 2028. And as you you know, there’s not, like, a lot of time. Right? So as you evaluate other solutions, it makes having someone who can actually demonstrate performance in production level vehicles, you know, gives you a big advantage there. And that’s why the Volkswagen programs are so important for us is because, you know, not only are we, you know, creating some level of competitive pressure because these systems are gonna start to be in Volkswagen vehicles late next year, we’re also creating the situation where we can show, like, production level hardware and production level software in a vehicle that can drive anywhere.

You know, even things like instead of having, like, a defined route for your demo, like, you know, just having the customer get in and telling them, like, where do you wanna go, it means a lot. It doesn’t mean that you’re not gonna continue to see investment in in house development, you know, maybe for that next cycle. Because I think in some ways, like, you’d you’d probably be stupid to just, like, you know, to to just ignore that, you know, there have been technology changes, that may create more, you know, opportunity for you to do in house or create more opportunity for other companies that are just starting now. But, you know, the idea of somebody, you know, like a wave, like, actually getting a system into production in the next couple of years, it it’s not it doesn’t it’s not credible with the OEMs. Right.

Colin Rusch, Lead for Oppenheimer’s Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization team, Oppenheimer: That’s that’s super helpful. So, you know, the other thing that’s happening with this kind of increased interest in the space is just the capital that’s gone into the ecosystem. Right? And and one of those spaces has been perception got, you know, a lot of capital early. There’s been some consolidation.

You know, you guys have made, some real strides in your own perception suite. You know, can you talk a little bit about, ecosystem of of, you know, perception solutions, you know, that are out there that are really gonna help support eyes off, mind off, and what Mobilize current thought is on on what’s needed and how that that part of the ecosystem evolves within the system level kind of functionality that you guys are talking about.

Dan Gelps, COO, Mobileye: Yeah. So we we we’re still big believers in, you know, perception systems that have different strengths and weaknesses create, like, a more robust structure overall. Right? Because you you can understand where the strengths and weaknesses are. And if you have, you know, two independent perception systems, you know, each analyzing the environment, the chances of both of them failing at the same time go way down.

So that’s, like, the simple explanation for why we see, you know, redundancy in sensors as really important. We have you know, I can remember Amnon telling me, like, almost ten years ago, like, that there’s way more, runway in radar than people expect and that, you know, you could see imaging radar type of sensors emerge as, you know, a good competitor to LIDAR because they’re less expensive, but, you know, even more importantly, because they they have they’re they’re more independent from cameras in terms of, you know, what they do well. You know? So so cameras have really good resolution, but the distance is not that great. Imaging radar has, you know, much better distance perception.

And if you can get the resolution to as good as LIDAR, then you kind of eliminate one of the, you know, the disadvantages to LIDAR. We feel like we’re there on that. You know, things like bad weather. I mean, you have to think about this. If, like, you’re, you know, an eyes off, you know, chauffeur type of vehicle and all of a sudden you hit a bank of fog, like, how long is it gonna take for the car to get the the driver back into the loop?

In the meantime, you know, you need a sensor that’s not gonna be impacted by weather there. So yeah. So I I think that, you know, the now that we’re approaching production of the imaging radar, we’re using b samples, we’re getting, like, much more confident in the spec and the performance. You know, we do see it as, like, a big advantage in scalability, and cost. So yeah.

So I I think that that’s, and and this is kinda showing up in the data too. Like, when we added the imaging radar belt to the VW test vehicles, like, that was another sort of MTBF boost. So we’re we’re getting these, like, chunky KPI improvements, you know, based on specific technologies, one of which is imaging radar.

Colin Rusch, Lead for Oppenheimer’s Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization team, Oppenheimer: That is incredibly helpful. And I wanna kinda translate this back into the customer customer dynamics, right, and customer wins because I I think there’s been a a big focus on platforms, you know, choosing you guys as your as an exclusive partner, but you’re working in a far more complex way with a lot of these customers. And so I wanna just get a sense of, you know, as as you start seeing, you know, some future proofing happen with the with OEMs, you know, the diversity of the segmentation that you’re talking about, how should we be thinking about, you know, Mobilize go to market strategy and and tracking real customer progress? Mhmm. You know, not just with, you know, the the big ones like you have with VW, but also some of the other opportunities that maybe aren’t necessarily, big announcements where you’re doing a lot of work in the background that have long term growth trajectories for the company.

Dan Gelps, COO, Mobileye: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think, like I mean, just to start with VW, like, the value of these programs goes way beyond the the value of the revenue that we’re gonna get from it. Because, like, if it wasn’t for VW, you know, investing in these programs, like, we would still be developing kind of in a vacuum. But having that customer that’s sort of holding your feet to the fire and, you know, keeping you to timelines and bringing up, like, well, what if this happens?

What if that happens? How do you interact with the HMI? Like, you know, what about parking, DMS? Like, all of these integration points that we probably wouldn’t be able to do on our own, you know, not to mention the customization work that VW is doing because that becomes a proof point to other customers. Hey.

This is not a black box. This is a system you can kind of create brand identity on top of it. So I think these are huge. It also, in a in a way, makes you a little bit agnostic to decision making because you know the products are gonna come out. And at that point, you know, they’re either gonna be superior to everything else or not.

And if they are, then the damn breaks. Right? But I think in the meantime in the meantime, like I said before, this sort of, like, you know, the kind of the knowledge that there’s going to be different segments here. It’s not just gonna be, like, base ADAS or, you know, navigate on pilot. Multiple segments means that, you know, running different programs with different suppliers or with multiple suppliers within a program just becomes too cumbersome for the organization.

So the one stop shop, you know, the fact that, you know, the chip is the same for each category. The the the the camera, you know, from for supervision, show for, and drive is exactly the same perception system camera based perception system for each. So you you save a lot of money on validation. So that becomes, you know, an advantage. The scalability, like, our ability to you know, we demonstrated capability in China.

Right? So, you know, Porsche and Audi, like, they they don’t wanna have, like, a separate you know, it’s cost them money to have a separate program in China. So the fact that we can support China as well is a big benefit. So right now, I think what we’ve seen is we do think that there is more sort of strategic clarity across a number of different OEMs about what they want for different vehicle segments, what are the criteria that they’re looking for in a supplier, do they want us to be tier one or tier two, And everything has become a little bit more formal. And, you know, right now, we’re and and even the timelines have been holding, you know, more steady for, let’s say, like, the last five or six months, and there’s a number of decisions that, you know, are targeted for the next few months.

And so, you know, we’re very much hoping to have kind of more proof points, about more customers. But, yeah, I I think, like, in some ways, like, the advantages of Mobileye have become, I think, more more more valuable, right now in a world where you you you you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket on, like, an you know, on a on an eyes on hands free. Like, you also have to think about robotaxi. You also have to think about your path to eyes off, and you also have to think about this lower cost segment that needs better performance.

Colin Rusch, Lead for Oppenheimer’s Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization team, Oppenheimer: So let’s let’s take it down to results. Right? You guys just posted, you know, a great two q. Right? And you had, you know, really, we thought, constructive three q guidance.

And then, you know, judiciously, you kept four q guidance pretty modest. Right? Like, you know, took the way and see approach. So, you know, I guess, what are you seeing in the market right now that that’s giving you that pause around four q and just wanting to, you know, keep keep numbers from getting ahead of ahead of what’s actually happening in the industry?

Dan Gelps, COO, Mobileye: I think we’re we’re not seeing anything specific, but I think we’d all agree that there’s probably more on you know, there’s more kind of geopolitical uncertainty than, you know, typical. Right? I think that you know? Yeah. I think the market has kinda looked at it as like, okay.

Either they know something bad is coming or they’re just sandbagging, and and I don’t really think it’s either. Like, we we we have kind of, you know, non cancelable purchase orders for q three. So we essentially know what the volume is going to be in Q3, but we don’t know how many vehicles are going to be produced in Q3. We’ve got a sense, but what if something kind of like lowers and you end up with like extra inventory on Q3 and it impacts Q4? Like, that could happen.

You know, you’ve got high car pricing. You’ve got high interest rates. You’ve got tariffs. I think if you if you look at it, you know, we did 18,100,000.0 chips in the first half. The high end of our guidance for the second half is 17.4.

The midpoint is 16.4. Like, we we definitely don’t wanna be below the midpoint and and and see that as, you know, pretty high probability. If you look at the IHS production forecast for the back half, our top 10 customers, you know, they’re expecting our top 10 customers to produce about a million less cars. So going from 18.1 to 17.1 wouldn’t be crazy at all. Right?

Now is IHS being overly conservative because they expect, you know, some weakening in the consumer or some weakening in the environment? Maybe. So I I think, like, the bottom line is, like, sort of the mid to the high end is kind of where IHS would sort of numbers would sort of imply. If we’re talking to our if we’re looking at what our customers are asking for, for the rest of the year, we’d probably be above the high end of guidance. But we’re not really willing to you know, take that risk.

So, you know, that that’s that’s the sense is we’re we’re we’re not seeing you know, we’re not hearing about anything specific. We’re not, like, seeing any kind of lowering of orders. We just wanted to be kind of, you know, rational and and kind of continue to rebuild credibility after we had a tough year last year with near term results.

Colin Rusch, Lead for Oppenheimer’s Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization team, Oppenheimer: That that makes all the sense in the world. So I guess, you know, as you think about, you know, not only the back half of this year, but moving into 2026 and thinking about kind of the value proposition and value sales, you know, or value focused sales, can you talk a little bit about the pricing dynamics? You know, like, with some of these emerging markets, we always see a lot of crosswinds in terms of, you know, sometimes wanting to lower price to enable new new markets. This seems like a different end market. And in terms of creating extra value to enable new functionality, should be outsized extra value to monetize.

And so how are you guys thinking about that as you get through the balance of this year and and think about, you know, potential revenue growth through not only units, but also through incremental value to your customers.

Dan Gelps, COO, Mobileye: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, pricing has been challenging in China given the mismatch between how OEMs value price versus versus performance, let’s say, you you there you don’t have the same you you don’t you don’t you don’t have the same, you know, testing criteria criteria in China that you do in other countries, and maybe you don’t the consumers aren’t as kind of focused on it. We did you know? So, yeah.

So so it’s but it’s been stable for the last year. Right? So I lost my train of thought. Sorry. Middle of last year, when sort of volumes had become, you know, concerning to us, like, we reopened, you know, discussions with a number of OEMs in China.

We agreed on a on a lower price, but also agreed on kind of export dynamic, right? So the what’s very clear with the Chinese OEMs is they are not confident in their ability to hit kind of ADAS performance targets in Europe and some other markets. So they need allies like Mobileye. It takes resource to do that. We’re not going to do it for just very small volumes.

So there was some level of commitment to volumes in China. And so far, like, we feel like we’ve kind of found this equilibrium point where our prices are higher than some of their competitors, but there’s still value there, for the customers. We we don’t see, you know, a lot of pricing pressure in Europe and The US because we’re continuing to get like higher safety standards that are requiring more functionality and more features. So this dynamic of like each generation, you give more for the same price is still holding in well. I think surround ADAS creates like a different environment where, you know, all of a sudden you’re gonna have like a chunk of volume that is at much higher content per vehicle.

Does that mean that the vehicles that are left behind that are okay with lower ADAS performance, you know, does does that create some pricing pressure? Maybe. But I think the, you know, that kind of the triple, you know, triple the price for Surround ADAS as regular ADAS, like, more than overwhelms anything like that. So, you know, we feel like we’re, you know, we’re in good position. It’s competitive like it always is, but we’re not seeing anything to be concerned about on pricing.

Colin Rusch, Lead for Oppenheimer’s Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization team, Oppenheimer: Yes. One last one before we get to a couple final, financial questions. Just the learning cycles between, China and some of these other end markets. Obviously, it was a lower bar around type certification and, you know, kind of some of the cycling that you’re able to do in China and then this dynamic around, you know, can that that technology that’s been developed in China really get exported into other markets? And we’ve seen kinda early stages in other kind of hardware markets there where the, you know, the view was it won’t travel well, and then it ultimately did.

Right? And so curious what you guys are seeing around that kind of cross geography pollination and, you know, kind of how strict the rules are and what you can take from China into other geographies to help move, you know, move those markets forward in a new way and then how those competitive landscapes might start shifting over time. Yeah.

Dan Gelps, COO, Mobileye: I mean, we’re definitely seeing a bit of, like, a two markets developing where, you know, there’s not a lot of cross pollination between systems that are developed in China and systems that are developed in Europe or The US using data from Europe and The US using hardware from the Europe and from Europe and The US. I mean, I think some of it’s geopolitics. Some of it is, like, inability to really access a lot of data in these markets, and so it makes it much more difficult to develop, you know, kinda hands free systems if you don’t have, you know, enough data from the market you’re trying to move into. We haven’t seen any competition kind of on the base ADAS side from Chinese suppliers for North America or European programs. So, you know, it still seems like their, you know, the performance of those chips is is not good enough to get anything.

You know, we’ve seen some bad bad examples like BYD tried to kinda deploy a a system, you know, outside of us in Europe, and it got the worst safety rating ever given in in in Europe. And that was that was a Western supplier that provided that. So, you know, we we feel like we’ve got really good competitive advantage in the base ADAS space. Higher level systems, I mean, it’s, like, it’s interesting. Probably most people have seen these videos of this benchmark test that happened in China, and these were all sort of high end vehicles, Chinese vehicles that, you know, went through, like, you know, twenty, twenty five different ADA more like ADAS type of tests and generally failed.

Right? And these were not, you know, systems with mobile like technology. So even, you know, the high end systems that are you get in them and they’re driving you. Right? It’s very impressive, but, you know, don’t have really much ADAS performance as well.

So that’s something that the OEMs have to think about as well. It’s like, you can’t just go with something like supervision or chauffeur functionality and forget about the safety criteria. So anyway, it’s I’m kind of rambling at at at this point. But, yeah, we’re we’re seeing sort of two markets develop. There’s still definitely openness for Western OEMs to use Western systems in China.

You know, we’re seeing that. We’ll see what happens.

Colin Rusch, Lead for Oppenheimer’s Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization team, Oppenheimer: Okay. And then I guess the final question, because we’re running out of time here, is really around the Intel sale of shares. Right? You know, that that happened in an orderly way. You guys participated in buying some of the that stock back, you know, and, you know, given some of the the cash issues that that platform has, you know, obviously, you’re not, you know, representing Intel, but just just wanna get the the basic sensibility from the mobile app perspective around that relationship, which seems like it’s been a pretty productive one today, you know, at this point.

Dan Gelps, COO, Mobileye: I think the relationship’s still very good. Like, they’re, you know, they’re a great owner. They they kinda leave us alone, but they provide support, you know, or kind of advice when necessary, like the board members. We we really appreciate the the intel employees that are, you know, on the board. I think I think it has to be a balance.

Right? They’re you know, my interpretation is they’re trying to balance their cash needs. They’re trying to balance their sort of public statements to investors about, divesting noncore assets with you know, they’re trying to balance that with other public statements that they make, like, you know, we continue to have strong conviction in in the long term growth opportunity of Mobilize. So, you know, I think that they they didn’t sell for two years, you know, stayed, you know, well above 80%. I I think, like, they need probably needed to show some action, on, you know, divesting noncore assets, and and they did that.

I think the interpretation of the market is that, you know, maybe they’re not so price sensitive and, you know, that this is gonna be a continued headwind. And and to me, I think that that’s the bigger kind of source of pressure on the stock over the last, like, month or two than or month really than, you know, anything about the guidance or the near term. You know? So, I think I think, like, we see a lot of positive catalysts in the near term that could change sentiment. I think Intel is aware of those as well.

So we don’t think that they’re in a rush. As far as the buyback, you know, this this was a one off. It shouldn’t be seen as a change in our kind of general capital allocation strategies. But I think, like you said, like, support for Intel’s process, helping to maybe accelerate the sell down at least in a small way. You know, we did about 10% of this offering.

We think our, you know, and kind of expressing that we see that the current valuation is very compelling, you know, were were all reasons why we thought it was a good idea to do do the buyback. You know? And and I think we’d probably do it again if there were other offerings, but it shouldn’t be seen as kind of a the start of a kind of a different capital allocation strategy for Mobileye.

Colin Rusch, Lead for Oppenheimer’s Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization team, Oppenheimer: Perfect. Well, listen. We are running out of time, Dan. It’s always a pleasure. Love love the capacity to go in a wide range of conversation with you.

Just for everyone in the audience, we’re happy to help you get a little bit deeper into the Mobilize story as needed and and put you in touch with the company as as it makes sense. So, Dan, thank you again. I hope everyone has a great balance of the day here at the conference, and we’ll talk to you all soon.

Dan Gelps, COO, Mobileye: Thanks a lot, Colin. Great job.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.