Mercedes with MavinDRMVIS has grown up and as they said at CES, MVIS is ready NOW!!Developments since April 2021 include:*Mavis has continually been shorted, with trades hidden in dark pools. It’s getting worse by the week.*MVIS have a cash runway right now that will last until the end of 2024. They have no debt and a low cash burn compared to the other LiDAR companies.*They have just acquired Ibeo and 2023 will see MVIS achieve their highest revenue, including a chunk from MSFT who altered their reporting methods in Q3 so revenue from recent Hololens 2 sales and the IVAS units haven’t shown on MVIS books yet!*MVIS was the first of 3 LiDAR companies chosen to be part of the FKA consortium set up to define LiDAR standards.*MVIS launched Mavin DR LiDAR last year. Initially in a uniform rectangular black casing, this was then changed to what was described as an “OEM friendly” white casing which had a very specific and unusual shape to it unlike the black casing. It has a slim profile and can mount neatly behind a car windscreen. When this converts to being made with an ASIC inside, the unit will be an even smaller form factor and it has an aperture window less than 14mm tall! More about this later!*Mavin works at 80mph, in bright sunshine and thrives at night, and in rain and can even see puddles on the road. It suffers no interference from other cars. None of this only up to 37mph on a dry straight road in daytime if you have a car that’s close enough to you nonsense that you’ll get with the inferior one that Mercedes is currently using! MVIS is the real deal.*Mavin works at 30hz, better than anything else out there. No other point cloud comes close to this!*Mavin uses 905nm so it is a cost effective and scalable solution for OEMs.*Mavin is now available to OEMs via the NVDA platform as of Sept 2022.*MVIS coincidentally gained a new board member – Jeff Herbst who spent 20 years working at NVDA in M&A.*Sumit said that when everything was as the OEMs wanted it, the design would be locked in and they would get it certified. At the end of September 22 Mavin was confirmed as being independently certified as class 1 safe for eyes. With another patent thrown in for good luck! (They have 700 patents now that the Ibeo ones get added to the pile)*MVIS do not have any more milestones to achieve, next stop is sales! They will demo the Ibeo software with the Mavin LiDAR very soon and it really is loading up time now!*MVIS have been dealing with at least 1 OEM since 2019, and they mentioned they were sitting on orders for sample sales in July’s earnings call. They shipped orders from the end of September. They quoted one OEM as saying “Mavin is the best LiDAR product they have ever seen”. Sumit’s character is that of a very humble man, but he does not believe there is any competition and he does not think there is a single LiDAR out there that comes close to Mavin. He said that this will be as big and disruptive as the creation of the internet.*October 2021 Sumit took part in an interview with Joanna Makris, where he said that they would need an order of 1.2-1.5 million units to justify ASIC production. They have since recruited ASIC experts, who are now working on the digital and analog ASICs, which suggests they are expecting deals imminently!*The MVIS executive bonus scheme rewards them for the share price reaching levels between $12 and $36.00. So a 10 bagger if it just goes to $36 and $36 is NOT THE CEILING!!! Their investor slides contained projections based on them taking between a 15%-40% share of the market. Anubhav has said the purchase of Ibeo adds significant upside to their original projections.*They have conditions in their contracts to lay out what happens if there is a change of control – including a trigger if the company that buys them out is based beyond a certain distance from their office.*In January 2022 the CFO Anubhav Verma said that he expects the industry darling (which they obviously believe will be MVIS) to be bought out within 18-24 months. That’s a timeframe of July 2023-January 2024. This suggests multiple high volume series production deals are expected to be signed over the coming months to support a big rise in the share price and to enable a buy out at an acceptable level. They have recently said that ZF is a likely contender to buy them out. They intend to use ZF as their manufacturing tier 1. ZF are one of the biggest tier 1s in the world and they have a history of acquisitions. But it could turn into a bidding war as Anubhav has also said a chip company might be a prospective contender too. They all have very deep pockets.Their business model includes an amount they will receive for the hardware and a fixed price software fee per unit sold (that will not reduce over time) and they will be valued in line with software company multipliers. A recent example of this is Adobe buying Figma at $20 billion. 50 times their annual revenue of $400 million! A $20 billion buy out for MVIS would put the share price in the region of $120 per share. Thanks to those shorting MVIS you can buy a share now for $3.xx! They would need to sell approx 2.6 millon units per year to achieve an annual revenue of $400 million (based on them splitting the $500-$800 revenue per unit with a tier 1 and very conservatively estimating that MVIS’s share is only $150 per unit). MVIS’s share of revenue will be mostly profit as they are taking on zero manufacturing expense or risk. Their January 2022 projections were for them to sell at least 30 million units to 2+ OEMS by 2030. That’s significantly more than 2.6 million units per year. Which means the share price could be greater than $120….and bearing in mind multiple deals must be coming very soon for Anubhav to believe a reasonable buy out time line for maximum shareholder value is July 2023 to Jan 2024! Zero milestones stand in the way of units being sold right now.In addition there is the ongoing income from the Microsoft Hololens 2 which only exists because of MVIS tech! MVIS tech is also believed to be in the IVAS headsets for the US army as part of a $22 billion contract. The MSFT contract runs out in December so MSFT need to either sign a new contract (which will be on more favourable terms for MVIS) or MSFT buy the vertical for a fair price. One thing is for sure, MSFT cannot honour the army contract without MVIS licensing the tech to them!Many AR patents from the goliaths have appeared that mention LBS and MVIS. Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are all working on headsets and smart glasses. Sumit said that MVIS tech will absolutely be a part of any smart glasses that make it to the market. Sumit said that the big players all know MVIS and they are ready and waiting when the goliaths complete their product development.In addition to this they have a HUD vertical which they have a contract with Sharp Foxconn – who just happen to have a deal to provide a car infotainment centre to cars for Stellantis…read into that what you want!In addition to this they have an interactive display vertical that could appear in a smart home device in the future.In addition to this their LiDAR can be incorporated into consumer home security devices, and they are developing channels for other uses for their LiDAR.There really isn’t any competition. The last year has got rid of lots of inferior companies. Cepton are clinging on thanks to a $100 million bail out but their latest model won’t even have software for another 12 months. Velodyne and Ouster are merging and have given up aiming for the main automotive market and trying to survive on deals in other areas. Luminar makes a car look like a taxi and are at least twice the cost of MVIS’s LiDAR . Innoviz is chunky and can only go in the grill. It’s an accepted fact that the higher up the car the better. Oh and Innoviz failed to deliver to BMW who have been selling cars with an empty space where the LiDAR should be. There are others like the new bosch one, but the point cloud is poor and it is chunky, in short there simply are no LiDARs out there with a better spec/point cloud than the MVIS Mavin and it is so slim it can mount into the seam where the roof meets the windscreen as it’s aperture window is less than 14mm tall. No lumps or bumps on the roof, no changing the car design or aerodynamics, just a discreet little window cut into that seam.There’s no doubt as to what will be the favourite LiDAR for OEMs moving forward.I’ve done so much reading up on this and I have zero doubt this could go to $100+ as long as the buyout doesn’t cut that journey short. As a minimum I can’t see a buy out happening below the $36 level to tie in with their bonus scheme.Then factor in that despite all of the above, MVIS is ridiculously shorted. Institutions are increasing their holdings. Blackrock have just filed that they now own 7.9% of MVIS – 13 million shares. MVIS retail shareholders keep buying the dips, no one is selling. We all know what we own and what it will be worth!It’s going to be one hell of a ride from now and anyone jumping in now is getting it at a great price. The LiDAR market is projected to be worth $80 billion by 2030. Never mind what the AR market will be worth. There is so much cash sitting out of the market at the moment, the FOMO will be out of this world when the LiDAR deals roll in. Which they will, the writing is on the wall, as Sumit himself has said “it’s inevitable”.Hop in and buckle up!!
