Luminar Reports Wider-Than-Expected Loss in Q2

Luminar Technologies (LAZR) reported lower-than-expected results in the second quarter of 2021. Meanwhile, the company has raised its guidance for 2021 on the back of strong year-to-date execution and accelerating OEM adoption.

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Luminar Technologies engages in the provision of mergers, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization and similar business combinations with one or more businesses.

The company reported an adjusted net loss of $0.08 per share, wider than the analysts’ expectations of a loss of $0.07 per share. It had reported a loss of $0.14 per share in the year-ago period.

Revenues jumped 84% year-over-year to $6.3 million but lagged the consensus estimate of $7.3 million. (See Luminar stock charts on TipRanks)

Luminar reported cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $580.4 million as of June 30, 2021, compared to $485.7 million as of December 31, 2020. Cash spend (operating cash flow less capital expenditures) stood at $32 million in the second quarter.

The Founder and CEO of Luminar, Austin Russell, said, “We’ve been relentlessly executing and are on-track or beating each of our five key milestones. Since our last update, we made our first acquisition as a public company, and we achieved the industry’s most significant commercial win to-date for lidar and software.”

For 2021, Luminar expects revenue to land between $30 million and $33 million, up from its previous guidance of $25 to $30 million. Its 2020 revenue stood at $14 million.

The company also doubled its major commercial win target this year to six from three, based on accelerated adoption of Luminar for OEM programs. Moreover, it increased forward-looking order book growth target to 60% over the prior year, up from the previous expectation of 40% growth.

Last month, Northland Securities analyst Gus Richard maintained a Buy rating on Luminar with a price target of $38 (118.4% upside potential).

Richard said, “LARZ has taken their core technology made them more robust and brought costs down for automotive Lidar applications. LARZ will be the first automotive lidar company to go into a production vehicle. We continue to believe that LAZR is the auto Lidar leader.”

The rest of the Street is cautiously optimistic about the stock with a Moderate Buy consensus based on 4 Buys and 2 Holds. The average Luminar price target of $28.33 implies 62.8% upside potential.