Luminar Stock Is Holding Steady. Guidance Met Expectations.

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Autonomous car-tech maker

Luminar Technologies

reported fourth-quarter earnings Monday evening. Shares are holding steady in after-hours trading as sales reported for the quarter, as well as the sales outlook management provided for 2022, look OK.

Luminar (ticker: LAZR) stock is down 0.5% in late trading at about $14. Shares rose 0.1% in Monday’s regular session, while the

S&P 500
and

Dow Jones Industrial Average
dropped 0.2% and 0.5%, respectively.

The company reported an adjusted loss of 12 cents a share on sales of $12.3 million. Wall Street was expecting a loss of 11 cents a share on sales of $11.8 million.

Earnings don’t matter as much as sales and other metrics early in the company’s life. Luminar provides lidar technology, laser-based radar. Lidar sensing is viewed as a key enabling technology for self-driving cars. Luminar ended the year with almost $800 million after raising more money in the fourth quarter of 2021.

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“Our first year as a public company was a blowout success having achieved all of our critical milestones,” said CEO Austin Russell in the company’s news release. “We secured major commercial wins, advanced our hardware and software technology, and are pioneering the future of safety and autonomy for the industry. 2022 will be our biggest year yet as we prepare for our breakthrough series production launch at year-end.”

Looking ahead, the company expects to generate 2022 sales of more than $40 million. Wall Street is projecting about $40.5 million in sales.

Back when the company began the process of becoming a publicly traded entity around August 2020, management projected about $35 million in 2022 sales with bigger growth coming in later years. Luminar expects to generate more than $800 million in annual sales by 2025.

Predicting what will happen to the stock in Tuesday trading will be difficult. Shares have been beaten up, falling about 18% year to date, as rising interest rates, inflation and the Russia-Ukraine conflict have sapped investor willingness to hold smaller, richly valued high growth stocks.

Luminar qualifies as a richly valued stock. Its market capitalization is roughly $5 billion, giving it a price to sales multiple based on 2022 estimated sales of roughly 120 times.

The company hosts a conference call at 5 p.m. eastern time to discuss results. Investors and analysts will be anxious to hear about lidar adoption by auto makers.

Write to Al Root at [email protected]