indie Semiconductor, Inc. (INDI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to indie's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Ashish Gupta, Investor Relations. Mr. Gupta, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to indie's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Joining me today are Donald McClymont, indie's CEO and Co-Founder; Naixi Wu, indie's CFO; and Mark Tyndall, EVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Donald will provide opening remarks and discuss business highlights. Naixi will then provide a review of indie's Q2 results and business outlook. Please note, 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 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 material risks and other important factors that could affect our financial results, please review our risk factors in our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, as supplemented by our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q as well as other public reports filed with the SEC. Finally, the results and guidance discussed today are based on consolidated non-GAAP financial measures such as non-GAAP operating loss, non-GAAP net loss and non-GAAP net loss per share. For a complete reconciliation with GAAP and the definition of the non-GAAP reconciling items, please see our Q2 earnings press release in addition to presentation summarizing our quarterly results and more details on non-GAAP measures as posted on our website in advance of this call at www.indie.inc. I'll now turn the call over to Donald.

Thanks, Ashish, and welcome, everyone. I'm very pleased to report that indie delivered a quarter of solid growth and performance with revenue of $64 million, up 24% year-over-year and above the midpoint of our guidance. Before turning to our business achievements, let me provide some context on the market environment. Overall, the automotive semiconductor market continues to recover steadily, driven by improving vehicle production and sustained demand for electric vehicles. China continues to be a leader in the automotive ecosystem, fueled by strong domestic demand and the growing presence of China vehicle brands in global markets. On a regional basis, China remained indie's strongest end market, followed by the U.S. and Europe. Outside of automotive, the emergence of physical AI and robotics is expanding the market opportunity for our high-performance SoCs as these applications require higher levels of processing, environmental sensing and real-time intelligence. These favorable market dynamics are reflected in our second quarter results, and we believe will intensify over the long run. Let me now turn to our recent business progress and key achievements during the past quarter. I'm excited to share that our 77 gigahertz radar chipset solution is gaining outsized traction through the deployment of our Tier 1 partner's Gen 8 radar product, with new wins soon expected with leading OEMs in North America and China, continuing to underline the leadership position that our radar technology enables. You may recall that on our last earnings call, we shared that indie was awarded an initial $25 million production order for our radar chipset. And since then, a design win was announced with a leading Tier 1 supplier supporting Volvo. These achievements highlight the continued market adoption of our radar solution and the increasing pace of customer engagement as we ramp production volumes. This partner is important for indie and one through which we are actively looking to expand our success into adjacent physical AI markets. As a reminder, radar is now a foundational sensor within automotive with use cases across ADAS, autonomous driving, self-parking, in-cabin monitoring and other emerging functions such as automatic door opening and road surface monitoring. Radar represents significant growth for indie with most implementations averaging 4 to 5 radars per car with opportunities for higher deployment numbers as application adoption continues. Our solution is enabling for all these types of systems as it offers superior resolution, longer detection range and enhanced object detection and classification across a wide range of weather and lighting conditions, all at a price point to enable the complete automotive spectrum from high-end fully autonomous vehicles to $20,000 entry-level cars. Industry forecasts underscore this momentum with key market research projecting the global automotive radar market to grow at an 18% CAGR through 2032, representing one of the fastest-growing segments within ADAS and vehicle sensing ecosystem. According to Yole Group by 2030, they expect up to 5 radar configurations per vehicle to become standard globally, driven by NCAP requirements, regional regulation and OEM differentiation strategies. And we are not standing still. As the sole supplier of radar chips in the 120 gigahertz frequency band, we are now seeing applications evolve due to even greater performance and lower cost point that we can provide by using this frequency, driven by the ability to integrate antennas into the chip package. This enables new use cases, both in the car and as a key perception technology for physical AI. The 120 gigahertz radar brings unique benefits supporting higher spatial resolution, more precise range measurements, micro movement and environmental detection, ideal for industrial, robotic and smart infrastructure applications. The 120 gigahertz solution has been successfully evaluated by several Tier 1s and OEMs across a wide range of physical AI applications. At the same time, our Photonics business is accelerating and becoming a core pillar of our product portfolio with its revenue stream increasing solidly. Quantum is one of the fastest-growing areas within Photonics. At less than $1 billion in 2025, the quantum photonics market is expected to exceed $14 billion, growing at a CAGR of 34% through 2035 according to SNS Insider. In fact, we achieved a record quarter for Quantum bookings while continuing to receive recurring orders for our LXM lasers used in quantum key distribution applications. Recent showcasing of our LXM and DFB laser portfolio have opened many new opportunities with new and current customers. indie is gaining meaningful traction through several customer-funded development programs, including one from a leading quantum customer and an additional project involving 2 Japanese companies. These engagements are particularly important because they highlight the differentiation of our photonic light source platform, allowing us to advance innovation and position us well for future production revenue as quantum applications move towards commercialization. Beyond Quantum, demand for our photonics portfolio continued to strengthen. We delivered a significant increase in sales bookings, reflecting growing customer demand and confidence in our technology. We also saw increased demand for our optical fiber components driven by the expanding adoption of AI and security solutions, creating demand for enterprise data infrastructure, which enables organizations to harness data securely, efficiently and at scale. Taken together, these results demonstrate the demand for our photonic solutions and reinforce our confidence in the long-term growth opportunities ahead. Moving to our Vision portfolio. Our latest addition is the iND881, an Edge AI SoC engineered for low power consumption and real-time responsiveness, delivering capabilities purpose-built for demanding Edge perception tasks. Building on the success of our flagship iND880, the iND881 not only delivers the image processing excellence of its predecessor, but also incorporates a powerful heterogeneous AI engine, further expanding functionality not only for our automotive core business, but also for industrial and consumer applications such as smart cameras for AMRs and humanoids as well as high-speed smart industrial cameras that require real-time processing and low latency capabilities. In the recent AutoSens and InCabin USA event in Detroit, we showcased the strong engagement and customer acclaim, an industry-first solution that combines DMS, OMS and emitter functionality within a single mirror unit. Powered by our iND881 SoC, the platform sets a new standard for integration and system efficiency. No other competing SoC on the market today can deliver this level of functionality in a single device. This differentiation is generating great customer interest with multiple design engagements currently underway with leading OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers. Our vision processing solutions are becoming the preferred industry platform for e-mirror solutions, further establishing indie as a leader in this space as we continue to secure new design wins with major automotive manufacturers and Tier 1 suppliers. With surging DRAM prices, we have capitalized on the opportunity to approach new and existing customers with our cost-optimized iND880 DRAMless architecture. By eliminating the need for external memory, the iND880 helps customers navigate any DRAM supply constraints. In many cases, our customers are unable to source memory at all and using the 880 allows them to alleviate line-down situations. Our iND880 vision processor continues to deliver success for customers, having secured several new design wins with leading Chinese OEMs in addition to Cadillac with a wide range of vehicle classes ranging from large SUVs, sedans and electric SUVs. With its ability to enable advanced camera and vision processing for ADAS applications, the iND880 remains extremely attractive to our customer base is being evaluated across multiple vehicle programs, setting up a healthy opportunity pipeline. The iND88X family is also gaining increased traction with many physical AI customers with China providing a large number of design wins. Two of our key wins are with leading humanoid robot manufacturers, Unitree and Agibot, which according to Omdia Research, each shipped more than 5,000 robots in 2025. The success of our emotion3D acquisition underscores the value of our hardware plus software strategy, which is now beginning to deliver recurring royalties to our revenue stream. By bringing together emotion3D's proven AI vision algorithms and our highly integrated automotive SoCs, we have established a differentiated one-stop shop platform for advanced in-cabin sensing that extends well beyond silicon alone. Our traction within in-cabin perception and driver and occupant monitoring is now further underpinned by the field-proven combination of indie's emotion3D software and vision processing SoCs, providing a pre-integrated DMS/OMS platform that is an attractive solution for customers looking to accelerate their time to market and reduce development risk. By offering our customers software hardware or a combination of both in a pre-integrated perception stack, we also provide ultimate flexibility in design approach. In recognition of our emotion3D software capabilities, we recently received the Supplier Excellence Award from Mahindra in their XEV 9S program. Through deep collaboration between Mahindra and our software team, we delivered AI-powered in-cabin software that enhance the safety, comfort and user experience, bringing advanced in-cabin intelligence to market. Last quarter, we announced that indie had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the CMOS image sensor Group from ams OSRAM AG. Imaging is a key component of sensor-rich platforms with high-performance visual applications such as humanoids, cobots and industrial automation. By leveraging these intelligent and high-performance sensors, we continue to build our foundational strategy to support rapid growth in the emerging physical AI market. Our transaction remains under review by regulatory authorities, and we anticipate closure prior to year-end. Turning to the previously announced potential divestiture of our equity interest in Wuxi indie Micro. While the exact timing of closing remains subject to the completion of its regulatory process, the transaction is progressing well, and we remain optimistic that the transaction will close later this year, consistent with our prior updates. With that, I'll turn the call over to Naixi to walk through our financial results.

Thank you, Donald, and good afternoon, everyone. Indie's second quarter revenue was $64 million, exceeding the midpoint of our outlook by $2 million, representing an increase of 24% compared to the prior year period. Revenue from our core business was approximately $36 million, a sequential growth of over 5%, reflecting the continued momentum in our ADAS portfolio, while revenue from our Wuxi subsidiary was $28 million. Non-GAAP operating expenses during the quarter totaled $37.9 million, consistent with our outlook. As a result, our second quarter non-GAAP operating loss was $8.9 million compared to a loss of $14.5 million in the comparable period in 2025, demonstrating our continued progress towards achieving profitability. With net interest expense of $2.8 million, our net loss was $11.7 million, and the loss per share was $0.05 on a base of 227.6 million shares, consistent with our guidance last quarter. Please refer to the presentation located on our website for a more detailed breakdown of non-GAAP measures. Turning to the balance sheet. We exited the quarter with total cash and cash equivalents, including restricted cash of $149 million, a net decrease of $35.7 million sequentially. This decline was primarily driven by our non-GAAP operating loss with additional cash used to build inventory in preparation for upcoming demand, increasing accounts receivable in line with our revenue growth and ongoing CapEx investment. Moving to our outlook for the third quarter of 2026. We expect to deliver total revenues between $67 million to $73 million. At the midpoint of this range, we anticipate our core business to reach approximately $40 million and our Wuxi subsidiary to contribute roughly $30 million in the third quarter. We expect to continue to improve our non-GAAP operating expenses to $37 million for Q3, down from approximately $38 million in Q2. Coupled with expected net interest expense of approximately $3.2 million and no tax expenses, we expect our net loss per share to decrease to approximately $0.04, assuming the midpoint of revenue range and the base of 230 million shares. In summary, our second quarter results reflect broad-based momentum across radar, vision and photonics, and we remain focused on delivering continued growth. With that, I'll turn the call back to Donald for closing remarks.

Thank you, Naixi, indie's business remains solid as evidenced by our strong second quarter results with accelerating top line growth heading into the third quarter. Our radar and vision programs continue to gain traction with leading OEMs and Tier 1 partners, and our expansion into Quantum and Physical AI is opening new avenues for outsized growth. With the pending CMOS image sensor acquisition further strengthening our portfolio, indie's technology leadership and expanding product breadth is positioning us to capitalize on these emerging opportunities. We believe indie offers one of the broadest and most differentiated product portfolios in the industry to meet the diverse needs of these markets. We are confident in our business as our radar and vision design wins continue to ramp. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And we'll hear from Craig Ellis with B. Riley Securities.

Donald, congratulations on the revenue momentum at midyear. I wanted to follow up on the Volvo win. Can you help us understand the timing with which that converts to revenue in its size? And on the subject of radar, how are we tracking versus what I think has been an expectation for around $35 million to $50 million in revenue this year for that product?

So I mean, we won't break down exact details of individual design wins for each customer. But that being said, Volvo has some significant volume. It has a high penetration rate as it's basically a luxury car manufacturer, so pretty much all of their models will feature this technology. So it's a very decent-sized design win for us. It's far from our only design win. And although it is the one that is the most public at the moment. In terms of where we see ourselves going for the rest of the year, obviously, radar is still going to be a big driver for all of our growth through '26, '27 and '28 and '29, in fact. So it will be a big portion of the growth perspective that we have in the outlook.

That's great. And then the follow-up relates to the DRAMless product, the iND880. There's been a lot of reporting out of Asia and China within the last 3 months that the manufacturing situation is getting even more painful than it was when you spoke to us 3 months ago about the cost of DRAM and its availability. So can you help us understand the degree to which that's converting to revenue this year or the extent to which and the extent to which it's giving you pipeline visibility for the coming years?

Yes. I mean it's a chunk of the growth that we see. It has come to us very swiftly because of the expediency and the nature of the situation. People have to ship somehow, and that means that regular design cycles go out the window. So we have seen things convert very quickly within a few weeks or a quarter at max. And yes, that's driving some pretty significant good news for us at the moment in a few markets, not only automotive, but also in the physical AI, which also is kind of a surprising and very nice upside for us that these products can be used in the other applications.

Next, we'll move to Cody Acree with Benchmark StoneX.

Congrats on the progress. Donald, maybe just following up on Craig's question on radar and if you can just include vision, can you help frame your ramp expectation, maybe the slope or scale of the ramp that you envision over the next few quarters for both those programs?

Yes. I mean they're both going to ramp very steeply. We should see the slope of the ramp accelerating from where we are right now. You should see that, of course, already in the guide for Q3. We are super excited about it on both fronts. We are seeing so much traction for both the product families, bringing us into new OEMs and even into new markets in some cases. So it's super exciting. We have applications, as I mentioned before, outside of automotive as well, in humanoid robotics and also even in drones, we're seeing our technologies being used. So it's super exciting.

And then maybe can you just help frame or give any details to the size of your current non-auto revenue in Physical AI, Quantum, photonics, what have you, what are the details you can provide? And then maybe how significant do you expect that non-auto business to grow to either the end of this year or end of next would help.

Well, we don't really subsegment, and it's still, let's say, nascent. I'd say perhaps the physical AI market is a little near. We quoted some numbers for the leading customers of ours who manufactured thousands of robots in the last sort of 12 months. And we are seeing predictions of these markets going into multiple millions across many applications in robotics, not just humanoids, but AMRs also. Quantum is a little harder to call, but I would say just at this very moment, there's a lot of buzz about it. Some of the guys out there are beginning to deploy qubit numbers in above 100,000 units. And it is getting close to the point where Quantum Advantage should reach a tipping point. So I mean it's really hard to put a number on it, but I mean, it is an exciting market. It's an exciting time to be alive and see our products going into these amazing new machines.

Next, we'll hear from Anthony Stoss with Craig-Hallum.

I just wanted to also follow up on the iND880, last quarter, you mentioned that you thought it would be more revenues potentially in 2026 than the radar. If you can shed more detail if it's going into low-end cars. I know it's heavily exposed to the China market. Just your sense on the building of the number of models per quarter and what you think the kind of the steepness of the ramp looks like in Q4? And then I had a follow-up.

Yes. I mean we are a little more indexed to China for this particular application, but we do now have wins with North American Tier 1s who are very significant volume in this application space. We're seeing application being deployed in low mid-tier and above and probably dozens of models by now.

Okay. And shifting gears, topic of gross margins. In the past, you've talked about trying to get to or expecting to get to 55% plus gross margins down the road. And I think not too long ago, you were hoping for 50% gross margins late this year. Where do you think that now shakes out? Do you still have hopes for a 50% gross margin quarter in Q4?