Q4 2023 Ouster Inc Earnings Call
Participants
Chen Geng; VP, Strategic Finance & Treasurer; Ouster Inc
Angus Pacala; Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder, Director; Ouster Inc
Mark Weinswig; Chief Financial Officer; Ouster Inc
Andres Sheppard; Analyst; Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P.
Brian Dobson; Analyst; Chardan Capital Markets, LLC
Kevin Cassidy; Analyst; Rosenblatt Securities Inc
Kevin Kerrigan; Analyst; WestPark Capital
Presentation
Operator
Hello, and welcome to Ouster's fourth-quarter 2023 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Again, this call is being recorded and a replay of the call will be available on the Ouster Investor Relations website, an hour after the completion of this call.
I'd now like to turn the conference over to Chen Geng, VP of Strategic Finance and Treasurer. Please go ahead.
Chen Geng
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our fourth-quarter 2023 earnings call. I am joined today by Ouster's Chief Executive Officer, Angus Pacala; and Chief Financial Officer, Mark Weinswig.
Before we begin the prepared remarks, we would like to remind you that earlier today, Houser issued a press release announcing its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2020 results. An investor presentation was published and is available on the Investor Relations section of Altria's website.
I'd also like to remind everyone that during the course of this conference call, Ouster's management will discuss certain forward-looking information, including commentary regarding our growth strategy and go-forward financial framework, our first-quarter 2024 financial guidance, and other matters described in today's press release that are intended to be covered by the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 for forward-looking statements.
There is no guarantee that such plans, estimates, and expectations will be achieved and Ouster's actual results are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations that we may share with you today. In addition to any risks highlighted during this call, you should carefully consider other important risk factors and disclosures that may affect our future results as described in the reports filed with or furnished to the SEC, including Ouster's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, as will be updated and our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023.
Except as required by law, rule, or regulation, Ouster undertakes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this call. Information discussed on this call concerning Ouster's industry competitive position in the markets in which it operates is based on information from independent industry and research organizations, other third-party sources and management estimates, which are derived from publicly available information released by independent industry analysts and other third-party sources, as well as data from our internal research and are based on reasonable assumptions and computations made upon reviewing such data and its experience and knowledge of such industry end markets. By definition, assumptions are subject to uncertainty and risks, which could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the estimates.
During this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures should be considered as a supplement to and not a substitute for measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. For a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures discussed during this call and the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to today's press release.
I would now like to turn the call over to Angus.
Angus Pacala
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. 2023 was a transformative year for Ouster. We successfully completed the merger with Velodyne, which forged the company with a stronger balance sheet, expanded patent portfolio, and streamlined cost structure. We achieved important milestones across our operations, notably scaling production and shipments of REV7, our most performance sensor yet.
Additionally, we added new revenue streams with the launch of Ouster Gemini and Blue City, and demoed our first DF sensors with customers, marking a significant stride forward in our product development journey. This was all accomplished while delivering record financial performance, significantly reducing our cash burn, and exceeding our initial post-merger annualized cost savings target by over 40%.
Let's delve deeper into the four strategic priorities we laid out for 2023: driving business, execute on our digital ladder roadmap, develop a robust software ecosystem, and build a financially strong business.
Looking back at the past year, I believe the Ouster team successfully executed against each of these goals. First, Ouster booked a record $142 million in new business and generated a record $83 million in revenue, a 103% increase year over year. We closed large multimillion dollar deals across all four verticals, including production wins by May Mobility and Motional to supply lidar sensors for their autonomous vehicles.
We also saw increased demand from mapping inspection and warehouse automation customers who benefit from REV7's dramatic improvements in range, precision, and accuracy. This growth was complemented by the promotion of Cyrille Jacquemet, our new Senior Vice President of Global Sales. Cyrille has been with Ouster since 2018 and brings a comprehensive understanding of our market verticals, deep relationships with some of our largest customers, and experienced leading high-performing sales team.
Turning to our second priority. This year, we made significant advancements in our roadmap to develop the next-generation custom CMOS chips that power all of our products. First, we taped out the L4 chip, our state-of-the art ASIC that will power the next iteration of our Roadway Sensors.
We also made exciting progress on the Kronos chip, our automotive-grade custom silicon for the DN series this year, we plan to integrate Kronos into the final form factor DF. hardware that we've already demoed to over a dozen OEMs and Tier ones. We also made progress on our certification roadmap to deliver functionally safe cybersecurity products that meet ECLBCL. two and EMITST. standards. We achieved ISO 27,001 certification, which demonstrates our commitment to meet the highest standards of data security for our customers and partners. This is in addition to our ISO 9,001 and ISO 14,001 certifications for quality and environmental management. These achievements are key milestones that will help significantly expand our serviceable obtainable markets within the automotive, industrial and smart infrastructure industries.
Shifting to software solutions. Ouster bolstered its product portfolio with the launch of Ouster Gemini, our cloud backed digital lidar perception platform for cloud analytics, security and intelligent transportation systems. This was a major milestone and added a new revenue stream while lowering the barriers to wider adoption and increasing stickiness with our customers. We further expanded our solutions business with the addition of Blue city, our turnkey traffic management solution throughout the year. These software solutions were enhanced with new deep learning, AI perception models and partner integrations. We booked millions in software coupled sales in 2023, and we expect the contribution from this revenue stream to continue to increase.
Finally, in 2023, we made significant progress to build a financially strong business. We closed the merger with Velodyne and transitioned Velodyne products to a lower cost manufacture in Thailand. Our efforts to optimize our cost structure surpassed our initial post-merger annualized cost savings target by over 40% and significantly reduced our cash burn through the refinancing of our term loan, we lowered our cost of capital. We also implemented a new financial framework to guide Ouster toward profitability. This robust business model not only sets us apart from our peers, but also establishes a platform that we believe will deliver long-term value to our employees, customers and shareholders.
Our achievements in 2023, complemented by our differentiated digital lidar technology and a high-powered software solutions supports a uniquely diversified business model and will drive our near and long term revenue growth. I'm excited to continue this momentum in 2024 as we execute our plan towards profitability.
I'll now turn the call over to our CFO Mark Weinswig to provide more context on our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year.
Mark Weinswig
Thank you, Angus, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me start off by discussing our latest quarterly results. In the fourth quarter, we recognized a record $24.4 million in revenue, a 10% increase over the third quarter. The Robotics vertical was the largest contributor to revenue followed by smart infrastructure. Both verticals had multiple customers, each generating over $1 million of revenue, which illustrates the evolution of our customers from pilot test to commercial deployments in Q4, we shipped over 4,100 sensors, a record quarter for Ouster.
GAAP gross margins improved approximately 800 basis points to 22% versus 14% in the prior quarter. Non-GAAP gross margins improved to 35% in the fourth quarter and reached the highest levels since the merger. GAAP operating expenses of $43 million were higher sequentially driven by a litigation settlement and higher stock-based compensation expenses. We expect our GAAP operating expenses to fluctuate quarter to quarter, and we remain focused on improving operating expenses at or below third quarter 2023 levels.
Turning to full year results, for 2023, we reported record revenues of $83 million, an increase of 103% year over year. Bookings were $142 million and represented a book-to-bill ratio of 1.7 times. We expect to continue to report bookings on an annual basis. During 2023, we shipped over 13,500 sensors and achieved an average selling price of roughly $6,000. Full-year GAAP gross margins were 10%, and non-GAAP gross margins were 30%.
GAAP operating expenses were $382 million, which included goodwill impairment charges of $167 million. Looking back 2023 marked a year of transition as we successfully executed a plan to transform our cost structure, drive revenue growth and put us on a path to profitability in each quarter. Since the merger, we delivered sequentially higher revenues, higher gross margins and improved adjusted EBITDA. We also made significant financial progress by cutting our cash burn rate by over 50% since Q1 of 2023, lowering our cost of debt and improving our working capital management.
Overall, these accomplishments put Ouster in a strong position as we enter 2024. We believe we have the most performant family of sensors on the market, one of the broadest customer bases in the industry and a strong balance sheet with $192 million in cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and investments, and short-term investments.
As of December 31, our cash balance at year end includes approximately $11 million raised via our ATM during the quarter, reflecting our strategy to maintain a strong balance sheet to help fund our future growth.
Moving to our revenue guidance for the first quarter of 2020 for Ouster is targeting between $25 million and $26 million. This represents a sequential increase in revenue for the first quarter, which has historically been a seasonally weaker quarter.
I'll now turn the call back to Angus to share our 2024 goals and closing remarks.
Angus Pacala
Thanks, Mark. For 2024, we are focused on three strategic priorities for the business, which will extend our competitiveness, accelerate wider adoption and advanced Ouster on the path to profitability.
First, expand our software solutions and grow our installed base. Second, and advanced the development of digital lidar hardware, and third, make meaningful progress on our long term financial framework. Our Smart Infrastructure Solutions, Ouster Gemini and Blue City are enabling customers to improve operational efficiency and safety. We plan to release new subscription-based software tools later this year that improve the ease of installation and provide additional statistics and analytics to customers. These tools will support expanded adoption by existing customers as well as new opportunities at global logistics companies, security integrators and transportation authorities with millions of signalized intersections around the world and the global market for end system security cameras already estimated at $32 billion.
We expect software coupled sales to be a key contributor to future growth. For example, within smart infrastructure, Ouster was selected by a leading global logistics company for a multimillion dollar deal to deploy our digital lidar hardware, coupled with Alistair Gemini at approximately 130 logistics sites. This represents approximately 5% of this customer's global footprint. We see a massive opportunity to expand the deployment of our digital lidar solution to more sites over time and to replicate this offering with other leading logistics companies.
Turning to hardware, Ouster continues to progress on its digital ladder roadmap, developing technologies that will enhance operating performance, expand the serviceable obtainable market and provide further differentiation versus peers, Alistair's next-generation custom silicon chip deals for has been taped out and expected to bring significant improvements in range field of view and manufacturability, along with safety certifications to the OS. sensor family. In addition, we plan to integrate the Kronos chip into our solid-state digital flash sensors later this year.
Finally, Ouster has set a financial framework focused on achieving 30% to 50% annual revenue growth, expanding gross margins to 35% to 40% and maintaining operating expenses at or below third quarter 2023 levels. We expect 2020 for results to show meaningful progress against this framework, putting Ouster on a path to profitability.
In closing, Alastair was founded on the premise that lighter needs to be digital. If it is going to be ubiquitous designed around a silicon CMOS architecture. The performance of digital lidar can scale exponentially in line with Moore's Law. Our digital approach enables low cost customization that opens up broad industry applications while maintaining a streamlined manufacturing process that is designed for scalability.
Now with cloud-based software solutions, we are offering even more features, simplifying adoption and expanding the use case for LiDAR, we have a proven ability to manufacture at scale with positive gross margins and have demonstrated a strong track record of growth with record revenue and bookings over the last year. Our risk seven sensors are driving increased demand from material handling, mapping and robo-taxi customers. We see major opportunities to expand and replicate Ouster Gemini and Blue city deployments to existing and new customers throughout the year as a trusted American Light provider, Ouster is poised to capture increasing market share as the adoption of LiDAR accelerates across industries. And I am as confident as ever in our future.
With that, I'd like to open it for Q&A.
Question and Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Andres Sheppard, Cantor.
Andres Sheppard
Hi, good morning. Good afternoon, everyone, and congratulations on the quarter and thanks for taking our question. And guess I wanted to maybe get your thoughts around the auto industry and kind of where that stands in terms of beginning to fully ramp up on lidar sensors? I obviously realize auto is not a a core vertical for you guys, but just curious, kind of what trends you're seeing as it pertains to the auto industry?
Angus Pacala
Thank you.
And thanks for the question. Well, the audio auto industry is an interesting beast for LiDAR because it represents huge promise, but also huge uncertainty given that there is uncertainty and time lines of adopting that technology. And for that reason, Ouster has taken a measured approach that we feel very confident with our automotive strategy in automotive is one of our four key markets. We have a well-established set of automotive customers that we sell into today, and we're developing our new DS products and to specifically target the high-volume consumer, a DAS opportunity that again is a massive opportunity with an uncertain time line.
And now what Ouster is doing differently is focusing on building a product that we believe can capture that market and in the long run, build to the Holy Grail of what the market needs, which is a high-performance compact and affordable sensor and sensor suite actually. And that can play across many different form factors, vehicle types, models and levels of autonomy. I mean, that's represented with the DF. sensor and And here, it's much more important to build the right thing and build it on a time line that actually sets us up for decades of success versus being first to the market and waiting in some cases now as we're seeing for automakers to actually adopt a product that has come before, the market is really ready for it.
And so I'm really happy we actually made make major progress on the VIA product line in 2023. I was able to personally be present to demo the DF sensors with automakers and Tier ones in 2023. We got great feedback on the architecture, again, small form factor, high pixel density, great range resolution field of view and fully solid-state to meet the ruggedness the automotive industry. And now we're back to executing on building the final devices and that really hinges on this Kronos chip, where we have a world-class team and silicon designers that are building the final Kronos silicon that's going to go into the high volume DF products, and that's something that is going to happen this year.
Andres Sheppard
Got it thinking because that was super helpful. I really appreciate that on maybe a question for Mark next season. So as you continue to improve your gross margins, you know, in essence, you're inching closer to that 35% to 40% target. And what kind of blended ASPs and what's the best way to think about those safety for 2024 relative to this past quarter? Just curious kind of what trends are holding up, what's the best way we can think about incorporating that into our model?
Mark Weinswig
Yes. Thank you for the question on. So first of all, this quarter, Ouster sold a record number of sensors. We had a great quarter in terms of shipments and meeting customer demand. A lot of demand came in at the end of the quarter, a lot of interest, and that's also what led to our very high book-to-bill ratio.
In terms of ASPs going forward, we did have a slight decline quarter to quarter on ASPs, but it was nothing more than just a product mix shift in the quarter between different skews. So the good news for us is that our margins continue to improve and that's basically because of a couple of things. One is obviously revenue growth. Number two is that we are seeing a lower amount of excess and obsolete or some of these charges associated with the merger.
And third is we are seeing just overall cutting of cost internally. So we put together a structure this year to reduce our cost structure. We've been moving products overseas to contract manufacturing and we are becoming more efficient. So those things have led for us to build increase our margins to basically that 35% level and obviously, we're very happy by the performance in the quarter.
Andres Sheppard
That's helpful. And maybe just one last one, if I could. In regards to your liquidity, can you just remind us what is kind of the expected run rate now with the and the balance of $492 million?
Mark Weinswig
Yes, we have $102 million in cash and investment securities as of the end of December of this quarter are we reduced our adjusted EBITDA loss to $14 million in cash burn. We're continuing to see opportunities to grow our revenues, reduce our costs, improve our margins. So our goal is to continue to move down that path of profitability. And one thing we did in November, November, as we had laid out that financial framework and obviously weren't hitting on all cylinders. We got to meet that framework.
Andres Sheppard
Got it. Great. Thanks again, congrats on the quarter. I'll pass it on.
Angus Pacala
Thank you.
Operator
Brian Dobson, Chardan Capital.
Brian Dobson
Thanks. Good evening. Angus, do you think you could perhaps give a little bit of color on what you're seeing in the industrial market right now and kind of how you view that business in comparison with automotive should be margin in time and with clients in order to execute deals?
Angus Pacala
Sure. And thanks for the question, Brian, on the the or the there are many corollaries in terms of time to market between the industrial market and the automotive market. And but but the rollout of the technology can happen more linearly and which allows for industrial customers to kind of grow it track to have a more an expected time line for the rollout of the technology.
So what we've seen is that by engaging with a large number of industrial players, we are able to identify the industrial companies that can create a set of parameters that allows them to get their product out quickly and really invest in those players. And each and every year, a new set of industrial companies and has a mature enough product that they can bring that to market and start to expand their their purchasing with us and bring bring expanding volumes to market.
And so and that's that's much more of a predictable cadence because there are a lot of customers in this space and because industrial players are able to constrain the problem that they're that they're embarking on much better than the automotive players, whereas kind of all or nothing. And so that's led to a much more predictable business for Ouster.
And there are still many benefits for Ouster in the industrial space versus consumer automotive in terms of gross margins and ASP expectations. And that really just falls to the type of end customer. It's not a consumer generally industrial players are selling B2B, the other industrial players and the equipment costs that they're putting are lighter on or are much more expensive.
So multimillion dollar pieces of industrial machinery, construction equipment, mining equipment that can tolerate a higher price point higher ASPs than the consumer automotive industry. So and that just has led to again, it's kind of reflected in our results, our ASP resilience over the last year and the solid kind of quarter on quarter revenue build that we've shown for four quarters now since the mergers really because of the demand dynamics I just laid out in the industrial sector.
Brian Dobson
Excellent. Thanks very much.
Operator
Kevin Cassidy, Rosenblatt Securities.
Kevin Cassidy
Yes. Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on the great results and great progress. But along those lines, on the gross margin, you're at 35%. So you're getting very close to your target, but can you say what the moving parts are for potential improvement from here? Is it the lower material costs as revenues or units increase or is software the larger component of lifting gross margin?
Mark Weinswig
Yes. So I'll hit on a couple of items have led to the kind of improvements over the last couple of quarters. And I'm sorry, just I want to talk a little bit about kind of the software opportunity after we did the merger. The most important thing was really reducing the cost structure of the organization, the operations and manufacturing group put a huge effort in terms of that. We're able to move almost all debilitating sensors overseas over the in the first few months and now we are actually 100% outsourced over to us to our partner over in Thailand. That's led to a significant reduction in overall costs.
We've also seen a big increase in our volumes. That's also giving us additional opportunities in terms of operating leverage. So those are the two main factors that we've seen really in the last since the beginning of this year. And then obviously the release of the reps, seven sensor, which has just in with the most performance sensor in the market, we get a higher ASP, a lot of customer interest in that. And that's really led to us to see overall improvements in our gross margins.
Kevin Cassidy
Now going forward are limiting it to kind of walk through some of the go-forward opportunities on that from the software side?
Angus Pacala
Yes, absolutely. And I would highlight that there's further opportunity to produce and unique features and capabilities in our next generation of our sensors. So Rapid7 has shown that kind of immense success that we can tap by iterating on our silicon and driving new capability in the light our hardware, we're going to continue that with the L four just in the next generation of O S & Ds sensors.
But on the software side, with the solutions business that we've developed in the last year, was Ouster Gemini and Blue City. We see an opportunity to expand our margin in that business and potentially expand that the rate of adoption of lighter technology for the Smart Infrastructure use cases as kind of an added benefit to the software play that we're making there. So and you can imagine that the majority of customers that are buying Ouster light are have some significant investment in software that they are making to build a complete solution. And that investment is something that we are now able to sell and provide value ourselves through these complete solutions that we're providing and smart infrastructure. So we'll and I think that there's more to come there on the margin side.
Kevin Cassidy
Okay. Great. Yes, that was I was going to go into that question with the L4, if you expected ASPs to go up further and maybe I'm wrong, so I'm asking the question. How do you handle software revenue is going to be folded into the average selling price and amortize over that number sensors? Or is it going to be a separate line?
Mark Weinswig
It's a great question, and we are you know, as software does grow, you will start to see that we'll start to break out more information on that on and they'll probably start to happen over the next year or so. But we are really excited about the amount of deployments that we've already done to date and what that looks like. We are still refining the model as we work with customers. And that will change over time as more customers come into the fold and start seeing the opportunity for for the Aastra product line.
Yes. And I would add I mean the majority of our software revenue is is subscription based software business. And so we're already seeing customer willingness to adopt that model into the smart infrastructure sector.
Kevin Cassidy
Okay, great. Thanks. And congratulations again.
Angus Pacala
Thank you.
Operator
(Operaot Instructions) study Mit walling, Craig Hallum.
Hey, this is Charlotte, Wally, on for Richard. Shannon, congrats on the side. Are you guys My first question is on your Q1 guidance. Q1 guidance implies 35% growth year over year, which is on the lower end of your full-year guidance of 30% to 50% growth. So maybe here what is giving you the confidence that you'll be able to maintain that 30% plus growth throughout 2024?
Angus Pacala
Yes. Thanks for the questions. I mean, the I'm we really highlighted three strategic priorities for Alistair and the first two are focused on growth and the so those being the software solutions expanded business, the advancement in our digital lidar hardware, both OSDF and the third priority and just executing more generally on the financial framework briefly, we've laid out, but focusing on the first two, and we've seen an incredible kind of uptake and rapid uptake in the Gemini platform and the blue city platform. And I hope I have a really kind of positive outlook on how we're going to be able to expand that line of business more quickly with customers than our traditional line, our hardware business alone.
And that's really because we're providing the full solution for the first time in the smarter market with these software solutions and generally the time from first revenue to kind of meaningful revenue with a customer in something like the automotive or industrial space is because the and the customer themselves is developing a full software solution on top of the hardware that they're they're purchasing by circumventing that and selling them that complete solution day one, it's allowed us to build a much faster revenue base for partners that are willing to purchase that complete solution from us.
It's also allowing us to tap completely new markets. So Gemini is poised is positioned to be sold into the security and crowd analytics space and the security industry. All told $32 billion of security systems sold every year globally. So a massive market with a well as well-established customer base and a clear value proposition from Ouster Gemini to provide the next level of performance from a complete solution.
So going after big markets, there are new opportunities for Ouster and they're also spread to two adoption by the fact that it's a complete solution and something little different is happening. But but on this on the hardware side itself, but each time, we upgrade the OS. sensors and is an opportunity to remove barriers for a customer to adopt LiDAR technology.
We're able to provide more features more performance, more environmental robustness and to a customer that allows them to circumvent some of the challenging scenarios that they might get into good example, a mining machine that's used to operating in an industrial environment with the red seven sensors, the sensors computers through dust in a way that previous generations of liner camps that allow the customer to just remove a whole set of problems from from the scope of their their entire system design and things like that, give us confidence that we're going to continue on this trajectory of building building to the long-term model and hitting within those bounds that we established on revenue growth 30% to 50%.
And obviously, one key thing is that we had a great year in bookings. So we booked over $140 million. So we have kind of what gives us the confidence that we can continue to growth. We've just shown that we've been able to see huge interest. And by the way, these are take-or-pay binding orders that we receive from customers also like if that makes sense and thanks for the color on that.
Operator
Kevin Kerrigan, WestPark Capital.
Kevin Kerrigan
Yes, hey, good afternoon. I guess the market and my Congress made, thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the results. Yes, I think I asked you this last quarter, but any update on what software revenues were this quarter or is it too small or is it still too small on any plans to kind of expand software into other end markets?
Angus Pacala
Yes. So we aren't breaking software revenues out at this point. And we have mentioned that we've booked millions of dollars in software attached business off a couple of business as the combination of the software solution with the lighter hardware that we're selling. And we've put out a pretty fulsome press release in Q three around the traction that we've seen over 300 sites deployed with our software solutions in 2023 to that to do to date in 2023. And and so so I think we're happy with the rate of deployment, but we'll be breaking out software metrics specifically when we feel that they've grown to a degree where it's relevant.
Kevin Kerrigan
And then I'm sorry, what was the second part of the question and wondering whether you guys have any plans to expand into other end markets?
Angus Pacala
Yes. I think that there there is absolutely an opportunity to bring autonomy technology, Autonomy solutions into the industrial, robotics and automotive markets and potentially in that order. And we started with smart infrastructure first because it has some of the largest existing pre-existing established markets, for instance, the security market, the traffic and systems market and some of the lowest technical challenges to solve because it's fixed infrastructure versus safety critical moving assets.
But that being said, you know, I think that there's there's a potential for us to continue to build these the software offers and offerings in other businesses. And so stay tuned. I think the Ouster of five to 10 years from now look very different on what kind of software we're providing them at the Ouster of today.
Kevin Kerrigan
Yes. No, that makes sense. Okay, perfect.
And just as a follow-up, as you kind of look back at 2023 and then looking forward to 2024, did the the rate of customers looking to become more autonomous and adopt LiDAR and whether it's a smart infrastructure warehouse or robotics, is that kind of play out as you thought it would in 2023, and you see that rate kind of accelerating 2024 at?
Angus Pacala
Absolutely. And I was going to save this remark for the end, but I think it's appropriate now for those of you that tuned into it. And Jen-Hsun, long as you've and videos and a presentation at GTC. last week, he said it extremely well. You said everything that moves in the future will be robotic and increasingly lidar sensors are what's giving those machines, the eyesight, and that is an immense tailwind for our business in 2024 and beyond and robotics is already one of our key markets.
And so we think that we are extremely well poised to capture the increased focus on automation and autonomy across a diversity of end markets and things like the advancements in AI, the availability of performance and affordable Edge AI chips and co-processors is the perfect complement to our business. So we absolutely think that we're taking advantage of those trends, given that we focus from the start on being a diversified customer that is playing. And these are adjacent industries to automotive.
Kevin Kerrigan
Yes. No, that makes a ton of sense. I completely agree. Okay, perfect. I appreciate the detail. Thanks, guys.
Operator
This concludes the question-and-answer session. I'll turn the call to Angus Pacala for closing remarks.
Angus Pacala
Well, I want to thank all of Ouster's employees for delivering on a record 2023. And thank, everyone, that joined the call and ask questions today and look forward to an incredibly strong 2024.
Operator
This concludes today's conference call. We thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
