Aeva Technologies, Inc. Q1 2026 earnings call

Thank you. Welcome everyone to Aeva's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining on the call today are Soroush Salehian, Aeva's Co-founder and CEO; and Saurabh Sinha, Aeva's CFO. Ahead of this call, we issued our first quarter 2026 press release and presentation, which we will refer to today and can be found on our Investor Relations website at investors.aeva.com. Please note that on this call, we will be making forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These statements reflect our views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representative of our views as of any subsequent date. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations.

For a further discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our financial results, please refer to our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-Q and Form 10-K. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of Aeva's performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or in isolation from GAAP results. The webcast replay of this call will be available on our company website under the investor relations link. With that, let me turn the call over to Soroush.

Thanks, Andrew. Good afternoon, everyone. Q1 was a strong quarter at Aeva, where we achieved another one new quarterly revenue record as we continued executing on our growing commercial momentum. With the rise of Physical AI and more industries looking to leverage new levels of perception, Aeva is uniquely positioned with our FMCW LiDAR on chip technology to tap into a broader and more diverse range of applications than what is possible with conventional LiDAR. This quarter, it was especially exciting to see our commercial momentum progressing and expanding to more real-world deployments. This is not only helping drive our strong revenue trajectory, but we believe also further positions Aeva to continue our commercial growth with a growing list of customers. In automotive, we achieved important milestones with our customers on their path towards commercialization and production.

With Daimler Truck, we began deliveries of our production intent Atlas product, which highlights the maturity of Aeva's technology and is a critical step for the OEM's work towards series production. In passenger vehicles, we successfully integrated first Atlas Ultra sensors in the top European OEMs development vehicles and are jointly working on the AV stack development with this passenger OEM. Outside of automotive, we are growing in defense across multiple fronts, including expansion with Forterra to use Aeva's technology in a second autonomous ground vehicle as they look to leverage our long range and velocity measurements, and notably our wavelength undetectability by night vision systems. We're also seeing interest in other applications in defense, such as drones for further expansion. In smart infrastructure, we recently unveiled Aeva CityOS, our AI-powered platform for real-time intelligent traffic management.

The reception has been very positive. We have already won our first large-scale deployment in Georgia. On factory automation, we are seeing growing momentum with multiple customers. Our multi-year collaboration with Nikon is entering its next phase of commercial deployment, with Nikon recently launching its next generation robotic inspection laser radar system called APDIS MV5, which is powered by our Eve high-precision technology. This is part of a multi-year production agreement to use Aeva's technology for automated inspection in factories for automotive, aerospace, and energy industries. Beyond all of this, we continue to advance on new opportunities to use our technology platform across multiple Physical AI applications. Our focus remains on delivering on existing programs, further solidifying a leadership position with additional wins and scaling manufacturing to support the expanding demand for Aeva's differentiated technology. Let's dive more into Aeva's recent business developments.

Starting first with Daimler Truck. As the exclusive long-range LiDAR supplier and primary detection sensor for Daimler Truck's production program, Aeva plays a critical role in bringing their highway Level 4 solution to market. We continue to work very closely with Daimler Truck as well as with Torc, which are developing the AV stack. The start of Atlas C-sample deliveries to Daimler Truck this past quarter marks a major step forward on the OEM's path to commercialization. This is our production intent sensor for Daimler Truck's series production trucks and will be used by the OEM to finalize the AV stack validation and operation ahead of their target launch in 2027 and the following production ramp-up. For Aeva, it also represents a major achievement that demonstrates the maturity and readiness of our technology for mass scale automotive grade deployments.

We are on track to scale deliveries of our Atlas sensors to Daimler Truck over the course of this year, which will support the OEM's vehicle fleet rollout and additional milestones ahead of series production. Moving now to the latest developments automotive with the global top ten passenger OEM based in Europe and other automotive engagements. First, on the top European passenger OEM program, where we are the exclusive LiDAR supplier globally outside of China for the OEM's next generation Level 3 production program. We have been collaborating closely with both the OEM and the OEM's AV stack provider, and in the past quarter began integration of Atlas Ultra in the OEM's development vehicles. This has been going on track and will be used to jointly develop and mature the AV stack.

We expect to deliver additional sensors this year to support the OEM's ongoing development and fleet rollout ahead of target start of production in 2028. The top European passenger OEM selection of Aeva for its large-scale Level 3 program continues to serve as a strong vote of confidence in our technology and our growing maturity to the rest of the automotive industry. We are encouraged by our ongoing engagements and over Q1 continue to grow our pipeline. This includes our progress on the development program with a global top 5 passenger OEM that we announced last quarter. The work is focused on the configuration, integration, and validation of our Atlas Ultra sensors for the OEM's next generation global vehicle platform. We have successfully completed the initial set of milestones and will continue working with this OEM toward the next generation vehicle program.

Separately, we have kicked off our collaboration with NVIDIA following their selection of Aeva as the reference sensor for the DRIVE Hyperion platform. Aeva is the reference LiDAR sensor globally outside of China, which has the potential to effectively make Aeva a core LiDAR supplier to many leading passenger and commercial vehicle OEMs using the NVIDIA platform globally. As part of this, we are working together on one common platform comprising of the same sensor suite, meaning one common set of cameras, radars, LiDARs, and NVIDIA compute and autonomy software to offer to these leading OEMs and AV players. In the past quarter, our teams have made good progress on the integration of our FMCW technology into DRIVE Hyperion stack, including working together to implement our velocity data path in the DRIVE Hyperion platform.

In summary, we continue to advance on multiple automotive engagements, including other passenger programs and high volume ADAS Level 2 for commercial vehicles. We continue to believe that Aeva is well-positioned to secure additional wins given our differentiated performance, balance sheet, and commercial momentum, bringing further validation of Aeva's capability and maturity. Switching gears to other Physical AI applications. Aeva is quickly expanding in defense with Forterra, a leading provider of autonomous ground systems for defense and other complex operational environments. Since announcing our win with Forterra last quarter, I am pleased to share that Forterra is expanding use of Aeva 4D LiDAR to its newest autonomous ground vehicle called MESA. MESA integrates four Atlas sensors for surround view and leverages our long-range and velocity detection, vehicle positioning, and stealth operational capability in GPS-denied environments.

Beyond the growing demand for AGVs, we're seeing new interest in drones and working on opportunities to expand further with existing customers as well as new engagements with defense companies and organizations on both autonomy applications. Over the past quarter, we have also been expanding deeper into the smart infrastructure market, particularly around Intelligent Transportation Systems or ITS. This is a growing market opportunity as municipalities across the U.S. look to modernize infrastructure to be safer and more efficient. In just the U.S. alone, there are around 15 million intersections and more than 300,000 traffic signals. This is why we launched Aeva CityOS, a full stack intelligent traffic solution that combines 4D LiDAR with Edge AI processing and analytics in collaboration with our partners.

Compared to traditional ITS solutions which rely on cameras, radar, or inductive loop sensors, CityOS leverages the advantages of Aeva's 4D LiDAR to enable operation in all lighting conditions and deliver more advanced detection while preserving privacy. We are very encouraged that CityOS is quickly gaining traction with DOTs and municipalities across the U.S. We have already secured our first large-scale deployment in Georgia with an expansion to 30 additional intersections in the Greater Atlanta area. This expansion comes after a successful initial rollout across multiple intersections surrounding Centennial Olympic Park and others. The area is one of Atlanta's busiest pedestrian corridors, where we believe CityOS can help improve roadway safety and traffic operations.

Aeva's ITS team is also actively working with other programs and municipalities on new opportunities. We believe that our differentiated solution will drive additional deployments over the course of this year. In precision sensing, we are incredibly excited to see Nikon's first commercial laser radar product powered by our Eve precision sensing platform. With Aeva, Nikon's next generation APDIS laser radar system is capable of faster measurements in a smaller, more flexible size, which enables Nikon's major automotive OEM customers, aerospace, and energy production partners to shorten production times, cut costs, and improve quality for volume production. This product is a start of a multi-year production agreement to use Aeva's technology in Nikon's products. More broadly, the flexibility of our Eve precision technology is driving new interest to use Aeva across manufacturing and factory automation for a diverse set of industries, from automotive to energy production and semi-capital equipment manufacturing.

We are engaged with multiple customers on additional opportunities and working toward converting those to design wins as we expand in precision. With that, let me turn the call over to Saurabh, who will discuss our Q1 financial results.

Thank you, Soroush, and good afternoon, everyone. Consistent with how Aeva is delivering on our commercial objectives, our Q1 financial results also reflect our growing momentum. This includes achieving a new record revenue quarter of $6.3 million in Q1, which represents an increase of around 90% year-over-year, driven by scaling sensor shipments across multiple markets and progression on development milestones for major customers. The non-GAAP operating loss was $25.8 million in Q1, which is about flat year-over-year and highlights our ability to maintain operating expenses at similar levels versus the prior year while continuing to scale the business. Gross cash use, which we define as operating cash flow less CapEx, was $28.1 million in the quarter.

Our total available liquidity at the end of Q1 was $224.5 million, which consists of $99.5 million in cash equivalents, and marketable securities, and $125 million in an undrawn facility that is fully available to draw at management's sole discretion. We continue to believe that our performance and liquidity position differentiates us from peers, and together with our ongoing financial discipline, enables Aeva to support ongoing programs as well as secure new wins. With that, I will turn the call back to Soroush for closing remarks.

Thank you, Saurabh. In closing, I am really proud of how Aeva is expanding its leadership position with increasing real-world deployments of our unique perception platform across a wide range of industries. Looking ahead, as we continue to see growing commercial momentum and an increasing list of opportunities to pursue, we are keenly focused on execution, both with existing programs and new engagements. We're also scaling our manufacturing to support more customers and the increasing demand for our products and differentiated technology platform. With that, let's now turn to Q&A.