Autonomous And Smart Cities Will Accelerate LiDAR Adoption

Key Takeaways

• Rapid acceleration in bookings, strong OEM partnerships, and entry into diverse sectors position Innoviz for superior growth, recurring revenues, and market leadership in LiDAR.
  
• Scale advantages, high-value nonautomotive markets, and cost-lowering innovations are expected to significantly boost margins and speed up positive net earnings.
  
• Dependence on limited customers, high costs, supply chain risks, and intense competition threaten revenue consistency and delay profitability amid uncertain LiDAR market adoption.

Catalysts

Manufactures and sells automotive grade LiDAR sensors and perception software to enable safe autonomous driving at a mass scale.

• Analyst consensus highlights the $80 million-plus NRE payment plan and recent expansions, but the pace of NRE bookings is accelerating faster than expected, with 2025 guidance already being raised and substantial new OEMs being added; this suggests a turbocharged ramp in near-term cash flow, funding development and supporting stronger long-term revenue growth than the market currently assumes.
  
• Analysts broadly agree that integrating with Mobileye and NVIDIA provides platform exposure, but in reality, Innoviz's status as the definitive LiDAR supplier for multiple robotaxi programs (ID. Buzz, MOIA, HOLON, Lyft), alongside sweeping standard-fit opportunities at major OEMs, may lead to Innoviz becoming the de facto LiDAR standard in fast-growing mobility fleets-unlocking recurring, large-scale, and visible revenue even sooner than projected.
  
• The explosive growth of urban autonomous fleets and the onset of regulatory-mandated ADAS features worldwide is driving a new wave of demand for automotive-grade LiDAR, where Innoviz's mature, production-scale technology and unmatched partnerships uniquely position the company to win disproportionate market share, leading to both higher volumes and superior gross margin leverage.
  
• Innoviz is pioneering the entry into high-value, rapid-deployment end markets beyond automotive-such as security, smart infrastructure, and robotics-with nonautomotive ASPs and margins already several times higher than automotive, indicating a step-change in blended company-level margin and the potential for an outsized impact on overall profitability over the coming years.
  
• Advancements in solid-state LiDAR, deep IP, and design-for-manufacturing have drastically lowered Innoviz's unit costs, and with high-volume production lines already ramping, the company stands to unlock dramatic operating leverage-transforming gross margin structure and accelerating the company's path to positive net earnings.

Innoviz Technologies Future Earnings and Revenue Growth

Assumptions

• This narrative explores a more optimistic perspective on Innoviz Technologies compared to the consensus, based on a Fair Value that aligns with the bullish cohort of analysts.
• The bullish analysts are assuming Innoviz Technologies's revenue will grow by 135.5% annually over the next 3 years.
• Even the bullish analysts are not forecasting that Innoviz Technologies will become profitable in next 3 years. To represent the Analyst Price Target as a Future PE Valuation we will estimate Innoviz Technologies's profit margin will increase from -197.9% to the average US Electronic industry of 8.9% in 3 years.
• If Innoviz Technologies's profit margin were to converge on the industry average, you could expect earnings to reach $44.0 million (and earnings per share of $0.18) by about August 2028, up from $-74.6 million today. The analysts are largely in agreement about this estimate.
• In order for the above numbers to justify the price target of the more bullish analyst cohort, the company would need to trade at a PE ratio of 30.2x on those 2028 earnings, up from -4.8x today. This future PE is greater than the current PE for the US Electronic industry at 23.5x.
• Analysts expect the number of shares outstanding to grow by 7.0% per year for the next 3 years.
• To value all of this in today's terms, we will use a discount rate of 10.62%, as per the Simply Wall St company report.

Innoviz Technologies Future Earnings Per Share Growth

Risks

• Innoviz's ability to reach profitability remains uncertain as the company continues to report high R&D and operational expenses, and positive cash flow has been achieved primarily through nonrecurring engineering payments rather than sustained commercial LiDAR sales, putting sustained net margins and long-term earnings at risk if commercial demand growth underperforms.
  
• Ongoing global supply chain and geopolitical disruptions could complicate ramping up high-volume production and delivery to major OEMs, leading to delayed customer launches and unpredictable order fulfillment patterns, which could negatively impact both revenue consistency and customer relationships.
  
• The company's heavy reliance on a few large customers and a handful of sizable programs, such as significant contracts with top automotive OEMs and Mobileye, means that any customer delay, contract renegotiation, or non-conversion from development to series production could disproportionately impair revenue stability and increase earnings volatility.
  
• Growing competition from alternative sensing technologies and aggressive price competition within the LiDAR sector could accelerate price erosion, with the risk that LiDAR becomes commoditized or is outpaced by cameras, radar, or sensor fusion approaches, ultimately pressuring Innoviz's revenue growth and gross margins.
  
• Prolonged delays in global autonomous vehicle commercialization and stricter regulatory scrutiny over safety and data privacy could extend the timeline for mass deployment of LiDAR-equipped vehicles, leading to slower-than-expected growth in addressable markets and uncertainty around when Innoviz's largest programs will translate into meaningful recurring revenues.

Valuation

• The assumed bullish price target for Innoviz Technologies is $4.0, which is the highest price target estimate amongst analysts. This valuation is based on what can be assumed as the expectations of Innoviz Technologies's future earnings growth, profit margins and other risk factors from analysts on the bullish end of the spectrum.
  
• However, there is a degree of disagreement amongst analysts, with the most bullish reporting a price target of $4.0, and the most bearish reporting a price target of just $1.5.
  
• In order for you to agree with the bullish analysts, you'd need to believe that by 2028, revenues will be $492.2 million, earnings will come to $44.0 million, and it would be trading on a PE ratio of 30.2x, assuming you use a discount rate of 10.6%.
  
• Given the current share price of $1.78, the bullish analyst price target of $4.0 is 55.6% higher.
  
• We always encourage you to reach your own conclusions though. So sense check these analyst numbers against your own assumptions and expectations based on your understanding of the business and what you believe is probable.