Arbe Robotics Ltd. (ARBE) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Arbe Robotics Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. You should have all received the company's press release by now. If you have not, please check the company's website at www.arberobotics.com or call EK Global Investor Relations. I would now hand over the call to Mr. Kenny Green of EK Global Investor Relations. Mr. Green, would you like to begin?

Good day to all of you. Welcome to Arbe's conference call to discuss the results of the fourth quarter and full year 2025. Before we begin, I would like to remind our listeners that certain information provided on this call may contain forward-looking statements, the safe harbor statement outlined in today's earnings release also pertains to this call. If you have not received a copy of the release, please view it in the Investor Relations section of the company's website. Today, we are joined by Kobi Marenko, Arbe's Co-Founder and CEO, who will begin with a business update. Then we'll turn the call over to Ms. Karine Pinto-Flomenboim, CFO, who will review the financials; and Mr. Ram Machness, Arbe's Chief Business Officer. Finally, we will open the call up to our listeners for the question-and-answer session. And with that, I'd like to open it over to Kobi Marenko. Kobi, please go ahead.

Thank you, Kenny. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review Arbe's fourth quarter and full year 2025 results as well as our strategic direction and outlook for 2026. Over the past few months, we conducted a full strategic review and made a number of refinements. We have broadened our focus to markets, which we believe have shorter adoption cycles and clearer near-term revenue opportunities, while at the same time, keeping an eye on the longer-term target of winning major OEM deals. This change in focus is because we see strong momentum in defense, homeland security and other transportation applications beyond passenger vehicles, where we are seeing growing commercial traction. We also took actions to improve efficiencies, reducing our cost base by about 15%, enhance our balance sheet with an institutional-led $18.5 million financing that we closed a few weeks ago, extending our financial runway to fully support our next phase of execution. In this call, I want to provide more color on our strategic evolution, highlight recent commercial progress and outline our expectations for 2026. Production time lines for Level 3 autonomy in Western markets remain uncertain. In contrast, Chinese OEMs, including a new win, which we recently announced, are advancing in autonomous and sensing technologies. Beyond that, we see near-term revenue opportunities that can serve as meaningful growth engine for Arbe. As a result, we decided to broaden our marketing and sales focus beyond Western automotive OEM programs. We are prioritizing Chinese OEMs as well as markets, including defense, homeland security, RoboTaxi, marine safety and smart infrastructure, where our ultra-high resolution radar provides clear differentiation. Customers from these verticals are already placing orders and the opportunities in our pipeline tend to have shorter sales cycle. I do want to point out that Western automotive OEMs remain a long-term growth engine for Arbe, and we will still compete to be designed into Western OEM sensor suit. However, our strategy to date broaden our scope and reduces our dependence on the extended time line. As part of this strategic change, we announced today a planned leadership transition to support Arbe's next phase of execution. Ram Machness, who has served as Arbe's Chief Business Officer over the past 8 years and led our strategy, sales, product and support functions will assume the role of CEO as of April 1, 2026. At the same time, I will remain fully and actively involved in the company in my new role as President of Arbe. Ram has the full confidence of our Board of Directors and me, bringing 30 years of experience across embedded systems, semiconductors and the automotive industry, including 12 years in senior leadership roles at Texas Instruments. He brings a strong execution mindset, deep product and customer understanding and proven experience scaling complex technologies from development into production and into commercialization. With Ram leading day-to-day execution as CEO, I will focus on our long-term strategy, advance new initiatives, specifically in the defense market, develop key partnerships and guide strategic investments to help accelerate what I see as the new phase of sustainable long-term growth. Now I will hand over the call to Ram to say a few words.

Thank you, Kobi. I deeply appreciate the trust and confidence that the Board and Arbe co-founders, Kobi Marenko and Noam Arkind had placed in me. I would like to thank Kobi for leading Arbe from its inception and for building the strong foundation that has now enabled us to transition into serial production and move towards full commercialization. I'm excited about the opportunities ahead, and I'm committed to leveraging our strong products. I look forward to guiding Arbe for its next phase of growth and success. Back to you, Kobi.

Thank you, Ram. Turning to recent highlights. During 2025, we made solid progress. First, on the automotive front, we announced a new serial production design win with a state-owned OEM in China. HiRain Technologies LRR610 radar powered by our ultra-high definition radar chipset was selected for a Level 4 autonomous vehicle program. Production vehicles are expected to reach the market starting in 2027, and we see meaningful long-term potential. Second, in line with our strategy to expand beyond automotive, defense and homeland security continue to gain traction. Our Tier 1 Sensrad has placed chipset orders for Forterra's autonomous vehicle program for the U.S. Department of War. Forterra equips the next generation of defense unmanned ground vehicles, shaping operations in demanding environment. Sensrad's ultra-definition imaging radar powered by the Arbe chipset has been integrated into the Forterra AutoDrive perception suite to improve environmental awareness, obstacle detection and navigation in unstructured and GPS denied conditions. In parallel, we are integrating our chipset into a leading homeland security supplier radar system to deliver joint system-level solutions for defense forces, law enforcement, perimeter security and other homeland security applications. These collaborations significantly expand our presence in mission-critical defense market. Third, we are seeing momentum in RoboTaxi applications, supporting multiple RoboTaxi projects already across several countries. While the addressable market is smaller than that of passenger vehicles, we see strong long-term potential. Fourth, in the marine safety space, Sensor recently secured a large follow-up order from WATCHIT for marine collision preventing system powered by our chipset. The technology powers WATCHIT Eye, a commercially available system already selected by the Azimut Benetti Group, a leading builder of luxury yacht. Fifth, we are seeing traction in smart infrastructure applications. Sensor delivered follow-on orders for 4D imaging radars to its customers, Tianyi Transportation Technology in China in December 2025. Additional smart infrastructure projects using Arbe-based radars are underway. We continue to work closely with NVIDIA to integrate our ultra-high-resolution radar into their DRIVE Hyperion platform, combining our highly detailed sensing with the advanced AI compute to support production-ready vehicle autonomy. Finally, our technology leadership was recognized with 2 industry awards in 2025, including the Just Auto Excellence Award and the AutoTech Breakthrough Award. Looking ahead for 2026, our focus on markets with shorter adoption cycles is expected to begin contributing to revenue this year. I know that we remain engaged with global automotive OEMs. And while we expect to continue securing additional design wins over time, similar to our recent OEM wins in China, we are no longer providing guidance on their timing. In summary, we believe we are well positioned for the years ahead. We are diversifying our potential revenue base, having broadened our focus beyond passenger vehicle OEM programs and expanded into defense and other nonautomotive verticals. We start 2026 with a much strengthened balance sheet and lower expenses footprint and improved efficiency, which will extend our financial runway. In a few weeks at the beginning of the second quarter, I will be handing over the CEO reins to a strong pair of hands from a position of strength. Looking ahead, I believe that Arbe is increasingly well positioned for long-term and sustainable growth. I would like to turn the call over to our CFO, Karine, to go over the financials.

Thank you, Kobi, and hello, everyone. Let me review our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025 in more detail. Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025 totaled $0.5 million compared to $0.1 million in Q4 2024. For the full year of 2025, total revenue was $1 million compared to $0.8 million in 2024. Backlog as of today stands at $1.3 million. Gross profit for Q4 2025 was negative $0.1 million compared to a negative $0.2 million in the same period last year. Gross annual profit for 2025 was at the same level as 2024, a negative $0.8 million. Turning to operating expenses. Total operating expenses for Q4 2025 were $11.5 million, down from $12.6 million in Q4 2024. Operating expenses for the full year of 2025 totaled $47.1 million compared to $48.9 million in 2024. Operating expenses decreased year-over-year, primarily driven by lower share-based compensation. This reflects earlier equity grants and that have now fully vested as well as our most recent award being structured approximately half in cash and half in equity, resulting in lower equity expenses for this year. This decrease was partially offset by unfavorable foreign exchange impact and to a lesser extent, merit-based salary increases. As a result, operating loss for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $11.6 million, down from $12.8 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2024. Operating loss for the full year of 2025 was $47.9 million compared to a loss of $49.6 million in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measurement, which excludes expenses for noncash share-based compensation and for nonrecurring items, was a loss of $9.7 million in Q4 of 2025 compared to a loss of $9 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year of 2025 amounted to a loss of $37.6 million, resulting from the cash grant award and from the unfavorable foreign exchange impact compared to 2024 adjusted EBITDA loss of $33.3 million. We believe that this non-GAAP measurement is important in management's evaluation of our use of cash and planning and evaluating our cash requirements for the coming period. Net loss in the fourth quarter of 2025 was $10.2 million compared to a net loss of $12.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Net loss for the full year of 2025 was $45.2 million compared to a loss of $49.3 million in 2024. Net loss in 2025 included financial income of $2.8 million compared to a financial income of $0.3 million in 2024. Full year 2025 financial income included interest earned on deposits and gains from call option as well as impact of changes in the warrant liability for warrants not classified as equity and the revaluation of lease liabilities. These were partially offset by foreign exchange revaluation losses and to a lesser extent, issuance costs. Moving to our balance sheet. As of December 31, 2025, Arbe held $45 million in cash and cash equivalents and short-term bank deposits. During January 2026, we raised gross proceeds of $18.5 million in an underwritten public offering, thus providing a robust balance sheet, enabling an extended financial runway to fully support our next phase of execution. With respect to our guidance, to broaden our commercial business potential, we decided to expand our strategic focus beyond the Western automotive OEM programs to opportunities we believe have shorter adoption cycle and more immediate commercial potential, including defense, RoboTaxi, robot trucks and off-road markets. Our expanded strategy is intended to accelerate revenue generation while maintaining engagements with global automotive OEMs as part of the company's long-term vision. Based on current market conditions and customer engagements visibly, the company provides the following outlook for 2026. revenue in the range of $4 million to $6 million. Adjusted EBITDA for 2026 is projected to be a loss in the range of $28 million to $31 million, reflecting the company's strengthened balance sheet and cost reduction measures taken. This outlook reflects management's current expectation as of today and is subjected to change based on market conditions, customer adoption time lines and other factors. Arbe expects to continue signing additional automotive OEM design wins over time beyond the recently announced design wins. However, the timing of future wins remains dependent on OEM adoption cycle, which are taking longer than previously anticipated. As a result, the company is not providing guidance on the timing of additional automotive OEM design wins. Now we will be happy to open the call for your questions. Operator?

The first question comes from George Gianarikas of Canaccord.

Welcome, Ram. Congratulations. Maybe to start first on defense applications that appear to be gaining momentum. Can you help us understand the chips per vehicle or application that you're seeing in that market and whether or not it's -- what kind of traction you're seeing per vehicle so far?

You mean on the nonautomotive or you mean RoboTaxi?

Just first, purely on defense applications. Like is there a different structure to applications that means that they need more than one chip?

So in the defense application, there is a few verticals that we are targeting. First of all, there is Forterra, which is basically it's very close to regular automotive because it's autonomous driving. It's off-road, it's military, it's the U.S. Army, but it's basically very close to that. So it means that it's a one radar per vehicle. We have other customers in pipeline that pursue the same opportunity. But remember that because of the low volume, the price of these chipset is much higher than automotive and our gross margins are much better. The second vertical is the perimeter defense and drone detection. For that, we need to provide a 360-degree solution, which means it's basically 4 radars per unit. And again, since the volumes are -- and the prices of homeland security and defense, the gross margin is going to be much, much, much better than regular automotive. Same, I would say, in RoboTaxi. So the low volume represents much better gross margins. Of course, if you compare it to millions of units per year, this is not the same. But since anyway, the Level 3 assumptions were that the ramp-up of revenues will be very low. We believe that in '27, we will be able to reach revenues that from Level 3, maybe will be there in '31 or '32.

So maybe just to focus a little bit on RoboTaxi. Are the opportunities that you're seeing in the market with Chinese traditional and nontraditional OEMs? Or is it more Western nontraditional and traditional OEMs?

With the RoboTaxi players that are not OEMs. We don't see -- we don't think that the OEMs will control the RoboTaxi business. We believe that the players are not the OEMs. We know those players. From Waymo to Nuro to [ NVIDIA DRIVE ], all of those, we believe going to be the leaders in this market. I don't think it's a market of OEMs.

Right. And is the interest you're seeing with OEMs that are non-Chinese in the RoboTaxi market?

Not really. I think the Western OEMs, except, of course, Tesla lost their appetite for RoboTaxi.

Understood. And maybe just -- I just want to clarify what you said about the RoboTaxi revenue potential. Is that something that you see maybe ramping from a revenue perspective in 2027? Or did you say later this decade?

The RoboTaxi, we going to see revenues already in '26, and we're going to see a ramp up in -- we believe, in '26 '27, '28.

And then maybe last question for me with regard to the robotrucking, the autonomous trucking opportunity. How should we think about that and the potential for wins there and revenue ramp?

Yes, it's the same. So we have -- we already announced the truck customer. And yes, we believe that when we are saying when we are referring to RoboTaxi, we take the robot trucks as well.

The next question comes from Suji Desilva of ROTH Capital.

Ram, best of luck in the new role. So you talked about the non-auto opportunity. Can you talk about the sales cycle there and how much shorter it is versus passenger auto and how long you've been pursuing that market? It sounds like you already have some traction there.

So first, thank you for joining us even from London. So we began this shift around end of Q3 last year when we saw that the delays in the Labor 3 and the volumes and the appetite of the OEM is getting a bit lower than expected. So we see here a sales cycle that is much shorter. I would say, 6 months from first meeting of a client to at least a meaningful order. In the midterm, there is, of course, orders for 1 to 10 to 20 units for evaluation. And then from 6 months, we can get a meaningful order, which is hundreds or even more than that of units.

Okay. And it sounds like on this call, Kobi, that you're formalizing this effort or at least communicating it formally. What steps will you take internally to deploy kind of people internally to target these nonpassenger auto opportunities?

So first of all, we have dedicated sales operations for that. You're going to see our marketing efforts and the conferences that we are taking this year, they are all shifted to include also nonautomotive. And also from the inside organization, we, of course, did what is needed in terms -- in order to support it because the support is much more complicated. Every customer has its own demand and its own variations. We are cooperating here also with Sensrad and there is some customers that we need to support directly. All of that is things that we are doing.

Great. And then last question, Kobi. Can you talk about the difference perhaps in the competitive landscape of this non-passenger auto market? Or is it similar to the auto market? Any color there would be helpful.

So it's different between, let's say, RoboTaxi and robot truck, where we basically, I think, meeting the same competitors as in automotive. Then in the other verticals like defense and like marine and so on. On the defense side, there is not a solution right now in 77 gigahertz that is competing with us that can really support what we are offering. There is a 24 gigahertz radars, Echodyne and MatrixSpace radar are players in this market. But we believe that, first of all, there is a large demand right now. There is room for everyone. And there is a lot of advantage for the 77 gigahertz coming from the price and also the weather. 24 gigahertz is a spectrum that has problems in the humidity and rain, it's not as resilient as 77. And in those applications, of course, it's critical.

The next question comes from Casey Ryan of WestPark Capital.

This is an exciting update. Can I ask a quick few modeling questions. So the $4 million to $6 million in guidance sounds like that's all going to be all non-automotive is sort of the expectation today? Or is there some automotive built into that 4% to 6% revenue guide?

It's -- so we've mentioned it's mainly nonauto, we did mention -- HiRain, which is also...

Which is auto.

Okay. Okay. That's helpful. And then just quickly on the OpEx number. Do you believe Q4 numbers will be consistent roughly across '26? Or do you think that number will come down further? What are your thoughts just about direction, not giving out specific numbers?

Sure. So as we mentioned, we did do a restructuring in order for the company to continue its runway. So I assume that the adjusted EBITDA that we guided reflects this new course of expenses. So it will go down slightly in order to enable us.

Okay. Yes. Great. Those 2 points are helpful. And then sort of broadly, Defense is a very exciting sector and so are smart cities and all these sort of physical AI end markets. Is your product a candidate for things that are retrofits instead of new builds, so saying maybe existing military vehicles being equipped with autonomy or upgraded in some fashion to sort of consume advanced technologies like your chipset?

Sure. This is the -- it's like the RoboTaxi and like the robotrucks. Basically, the platform itself can get the radar in a later stage. So it's aftermarket like. So of course, we can support retrofit as well.

Okay. That's...

A big RFP for a retrofit of our vehicle that is already deployed in thousands of units.

Right. And do you think that there's interest and movement in sort of doing retrofits?

Yes, sure, sure. Sure. There is new -- I think our ability to provide drone detection in tactical forces is really appreciated by the customers, and this is all a retrofit.

Okay. Yes, that's actually pretty exciting because that is faster to market as well, but also fairly large, right? Upgrading all the existing could be a pretty exciting opportunity. And then just last question around defense. Are other defense forces candidates for you as well with your customers who could presumably build product for Western European forces as well beyond the U.S.

Yes, sure. Beyond U.S. and Israel, of course, we are looking also into Western Europe armies as...

Okay. Okay. And then sort of the last question, sort of the slowdown a little bit in automotive. Is there any connection to sort of the pacing of, say, EVs versus ICE in terms of the powertrain thoughts around OEMs? Or are there other factors at play around moving to L3 and L4 and those types of things?

I think it's connected and not connected. So of course, the fact that the OEMs invested a lot in EV and the EV basically is slowing down. This has caused the OEMs for a huge write-offs in tens of billions of dollars. And of course, this is forces them to reduce the headcount and to cut expenses. And this is all delaying their R&D for the Level 3. So it's not because of the fact that the EV is not there. It's because of the fact that the EV caused them major losses.

Got it. That's actually very helpful. It makes a lot of sense. Well, sort of beyond that sort of short-term slowdown, it feels like a pretty exciting outlook for '26 with new markets and then hopefully progress in automotive as we move to '27. Thank you for those answers and discussion points.

[Operator Instructions]. There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Marenko, would you like to make your concluding statement?

Yes. On behalf of the management of Arbe, I would like to thank you, our shareholders, for your continued interest and long-term support of our business. Before I leave, I want to say that I have totally enjoyed serving as Arbe's CEO, and I am proud of our achievements. Over the year, we have built a strong technology foundation, achieved important milestones and positioned the company for its next phase of growth. While we have accomplished a great deal, there is still much more ahead, and I'm excited to hand over the CEO reins to Ram in the near future. I have full confidence in Ram's leadership and look forward to working closely with him as President of Arbe as we continue to execute on our strategy and build long-term value. And with that, we will end our call. Have a good day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.