Ouster, Inc. (NYSE:OUST) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 4, 2022 5:00 PM ET
Company Participants
Sarah Ewing – Director, Investor Relations
Angus Pacala – Chief Executive Officer
Anna Brunelle – Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Andres Sheppard – Cantor Fitzgerald
Brian Dobson – Chardan Capital Markets
Colin Rusch – Oppenheimer & Company
Richard Shannon – Craig-Hallum Capital Group
Itay Michaeli – Citi
Operator
Hello and welcome to Ouster’s Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] The call today 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 Sarah Ewing, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Sarah Ewing
Thank you, operator and good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us for our 2022 second quarter earnings call.
I am joined today by Ouster’s Chief Executive Officer, Angus Pacala and Chief Financial Officer, Anna Brunelle.
Before we begin the prepared remarks, we would like to remind you that Ouster issued a press release announcing its second quarter financial results shortly after market close today. The company also published an investor presentation, which is available on the Investor Relations section of ouster.com. I’d also like to remind everyone that during the course of this conference call, Ouster’s management will discuss forecasts, targets and other forward-looking statements regarding the company, including statements from its press release, potential future customer orders and shipments, near- and long-term revenue opportunities, strategic customer agreements, market share trends, ability to recognize the benefits of cost savings initiatives, future products, anticipated product releases, technological advancements and commercial path potential future market opportunities, customer traction in the company’s business outlook and 2022 financial guidance and trajectory that are intended to be covered by the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and for forward-looking statements.
While these statements represent management’s expected future results and performance, Ouster’s actual results are subject to many risks and uncertainties that could 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 consider the important risk factors and other disclosures that may affect Ouster’s future results as described in its most recent annual report on Form 10-K and other reports the company files with or furnishes to the SEC. Except as required by law, rule or regulation, the company undertakes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this call.
Lastly, information discussed on this call concerning the company’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. Management estimates are derived from publicly available information released by independent industry analysts and other third-party sources as well as data from the company’s internal research and are based on reasonable assumptions and computation made upon reviewing such data and its experience in 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 may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, which exclude the effects of events and transactions we consider to be outside our core operations. These non-GAAP measures should be considered a supplement to and not a substitute for, measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. For a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to today’s press release.
I would now like to turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Angus Pacala.
Angus Pacala
Thank you, Sarah. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us today. We continued our momentum in the second quarter of 2022, recording our second highest quarterly revenue of $10.3 million. We delivered 40% year-over-year revenue growth, grew our pipeline by 90 new customers locked in additional design wins, increased our number of signed multiyear strategic customer agreements by 80 and advanced our traction with automakers driven by strong demand for our solid-state Digital Flash A-Sample sensors with 2020 shipped in the quarter. We have now shipped almost 14,000 sensors to customers around the world.
Ouster’s ability to deliver performance, cost-efficient digital lidar sensors to customers spanning a diverse set of industries is a key differentiator that is driving year-over-year growth despite the current macro environment. That said, it’s clear that our top line growth has been impacted by market uncertainties that have slowed customers’ wrap rates. As a result, we are revising our full year 2022 revenue guidance to $40 million to $55 million and reducing costs in the second half of the year to match our growth. These actions are coupled with previously announced financing efforts to further strengthen our cash position.
Economic headwinds may be impacting our top line growth, but they are not impacting our competitiveness, our product road map or expectations for long-term growth. Our differentiated technology backed by a leading cost structure and our diversification across markets positions after the benefit from the immense global investments in automation. This, in combination with the most exciting string of upcoming product releases in Ouster’s history gives us confidence that we will continue to win deals in head-to-head competition, capture market share and maintain our long-term growth trajectory.
I’ll now turn it over to our CFO, Anna Brunelle, who will provide an update on our second quarter performance and expectations for the remainder of the year.
Anna Brunelle
Thank you, Angus and good afternoon everyone. As Angus stated, in the second quarter of 2022, we recorded our second highest quarterly revenue of $10.3 million, up 40% over the second quarter of 2021 and up 20% over the first quarter of 2022. We shipped 2020 sensors in Q2, a 38% increase over the second quarter of 2021 and almost 14,000 sensors shipped to date. We delivered gross margins of 27%, up from the 26% gross margins recorded in the second quarter of 2021, but down slightly from the 30% gross margins recorded in the first quarter of 2022.
Over the course of the second quarter, our average sales price per unit declined slightly to approximately $5,100, while our cost per unit sold remained relatively steady at approximately $3,700 despite continued supply chain headwinds. Even with these market headwinds, our proven manufacturing and operations team avoided material production and shipping delays to customers and the company delivered strong positive gross margin. Our margin trajectory remains in place. We expect our average cost per unit sold will decline faster than our average selling price as our sales volumes continue to increase. However, these two variables will always move in tandem on a quarterly basis.
Based on public information, Ouster has the highest hardware gross margin profile of our public lidar peer group validating our leading cost structure associated with our CMOS digital lidar architecture, which enables high scalability in both performance and cost. In the second quarter, we sold sensors to approximately 90 new customers with growth seen across verticals and particularly out of the Europe and Middle Eastern region. Our largest revenue growth from new and existing customers was found in the industrial and robotics verticals, making up 40% and 28% of sales in the second quarter respectively. These results are in line with global trends as companies take steps to automate their supply chain to increase productivity and solve for a lack of skilled labor in the market. Through the end of the second quarter, we increased the number of strategic customer agreements, or SCA, to 80, representing approximately $575 million in contracted revenue opportunity through 2026.
Ouster is able to capitalize on a broad range of opportunities to support steady growth which is exemplified by our over 600 customers, including a growing number of multiyear SCAs across our four market verticals. While market uncertainties can impact our customers’ ramp rate, and the timing of purchase orders, our flexible CMOS digital architecture enables us to sell into multiple verticals, eliminate the independency on adoption within a single market.
As Angus mentioned, the fundamentals of Ouster’s business remain unchanged. Our differentiated technology backed by a leading cost structure and our multi-market approach positions Ouster to take advantage of global trends towards increased automation and improved roadway and worksite safety. As a result, we remain confident in our ability to continue to win deals in head-to-head competition across each of our core market verticals to grow our market share and to maintain our long-term growth trajectory. We plan to focus on 3 key areas to strengthen our financial position, strategic fundraising, targeted spend and accelerated growth.
In the second quarter, we continued to bolster our financial position through balance sheet initiatives, including a previously announced term loan facility of up to $50 million and an at-the-market offering or ATM, of up to $150 million available through 2025. By June 30, we drew $20 million on the term loan facility and raised approximately $15 million from the sales of common stock through the ATM. With this additional financing, we maintained a cash balance of approximately $162 million at the end of the second quarter. We plan to couple these financing options with internal initiatives to continuously improve our overall cost structure.
While on the manufacturing side, we continue to reduce our bill of materials and improve margins over time. Finally, we are fine-tuning our commercial efforts to focus on our largest customers in our most established markets with plans to introduce new products that are expected to accelerate our ability to capture market share. We believe these initiatives will strengthen our business and provide us with the flexibility and liquidity to execute on our business plan.
Turning to our revised full year 2022 guidance given the significant increase in macroeconomic uncertainty our customers are facing some short-term growing pain, impacting our outlook for the remainder of the year. We are seeing a slowdown in consumer production and deployment schedule. And within our prospective and current customer base, companies are taking proactive financial measures to conserve cash by implementing layoffs and staggering their purchasing cycles.
In addition, the supply chain bottlenecks, has affected some of our customers’ ability to build to meet demand. As a result, we’ve seen a significant number of our large deal delay or spread out over a longer period of time than previously anticipated. In response to these dynamics and their effect on our near-term bottoms-up analysis, which takes into account delayed ramp rates across verticals, we have revised our full year 2022 revenue guidance to $40 million to $55 million in revenue.
Our gross margin guidance of 25% to 30% remains unchanged, given our industry-leading cost structure. Yet in light of sustained customer demand for lidar technology, a growing customer base, continued success in head-to-head commercial competition and steady revenue growth. We remain confident in our growth business strategy and overall competitiveness.
While some large deals have been delayed, the size of our opportunity set remains the largest we have seen in Ouster’s history. By revising our revenue guidance for this year and take a prudent financial measures to ensure access to capital and manage our cost structure in the current environment, we are better positioned in navigate headwinds while simultaneously scaling the business to achieve industry-leading growth.
I’d now like to turn the call back over to Angus.
Angus Pacala
Thanks, Anna. We have confidence in the business because of the success of our unique digital platform, our exciting lineup of upcoming product releases as well as the positive customer response across each of our market verticals.
Turning first to Automotive, we shipped our first Digital Flash or DF A-Sample sensors in April, delivering on a major milestone in our strategic development agreement with our global automotive OEM partner. Since then, we’ve advanced our commercial traction with automakers driven by strong demand for our first day samples. The Ouster Automotive team embarked on a global roadshow to demonstrate the performance capabilities of our solid-state sensor platform with automakers, Tier 1s and AV companies.
Ouster Automotive can offer a package of sensors for a lower pricing and smaller overall size than the single forward-looking analog lidars offered by some of our competitors. By being the small and affordable, a suite of DF sensors can be integrated around the vehicle just like digital cameras to provide 360-degree awareness and a rich set of safe autonomy features.
Ouster’s short, medium and long-range ladders, looking to the front side and behind the vehicle, provide the critical data necessary for safe, automated lane changes, confident maneuvering through four-way intersections, reliable high-speed mergers and so much more. Put simply, multi-sensor digital lidar suits are the bridge from driver assistance to safe, affordable eyes free autonomy. While we expect our solid-state sensors to be adopted on passenger vehicles, starting production in 2025, we have a meaningful automotive business today for trucks, buses and shuttles using our OS scanning sensors.
Our second largest order this quarter was shipped to a new FCA customer that is testing commercial deployments of its fully autonomous and electric logistics trucks here in the U.S. We also shipped a large order of sensors to a major U.S. automaker with plans to bring its autonomous shuttle into large-scale production as well as a major European OEM, which recently showcased the new bus out with their OS sensors.
Within the industrial and robotics verticals, we continue to benefit from automation trends as more companies take steps to increase productivity and solve for a lack of skilled labor in the market. As predicted last quarter, warehouse automation, port and logistics automation and off-highway mining and agriculture vehicles continue to be major growth drivers for our business. The industrial and robotics verticals alone accounted for more than two-thirds of our revenue in the second quarter. Again, we are working with a wide range of industrial customers from OEMs to global e-commerce and logistics companies developing their own in-house solutions. We’ve won each of these design wins in head-to-head competition against analog lidar solutions, leading us to believe that digital lidar is the reliable performance and cost-efficient sensor of choice for automation.
Finally, turning to smart infrastructure. We are only just beginning to unlock the many opportunities within smart infrastructure for digital lidar, combined with the right software analytics can provide incredibly valuable information to end users. We can bring greater intelligence, connectivity and safety to public and private spaces with solutions for ITS or intelligent transportation systems, security and cloud analytics. Take the multibillion-dollar security market where we see a massive opportunity to disrupt the status quo with the joint security solution we released last quarter, Ouster Accur8vision and benefit from relatively high ASPs and faster sales cycles. Largely dominated by cameras to date, these nascent submarkets within smart infrastructure hold the opportunity for incredible upside.
Turning to product updates. We’re focused on achieving vertical-specific product and safety certifications aimed at expanding market opportunities and displacing legacy analog sensors, which opens up entirely new segments of the market. Ouster achieved a major milestone on our path towards automotive and industrial safety certifications with the achievement of our ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certifications. This is a huge step towards achieving functional safety and soul to industrial safety for our products.
We also reached a critical milestone in the past quarter by taking delivery of our first samples of the L3 chip. The L3 chip represents the most significant advancement in the performance of our L Series chips since Ouster’s founding in 2015. I simply can’t wait to unveil the L3 chip later this year and provide further evidence for why digital CMOS technology represents the end state for the lidar industry.
Ouster is focused on building a great team and great products, winning customers and growing faster than our competitors, all on a path to building a more efficient, convenient and safer world. I’m confident we’re doing exactly what we should be we remain singularly focused on our goal of being the leading lidar company across our end markets now and for decades to come.
And with that, I’d like to open it up for Q&A.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from the line of Andres Sheppard from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.
Andres Sheppard
Hey, good afternoon, guys. And congratulations on the quarter. Quick question. Just in regards to now the revenue guidance. I know in the past, you had mentioned that you expected a ramp in the second half of the year. I’m just wondering, could you give us any color in terms of is that evenly spread across Q3, Q4? Or do you expect kind of the bigger ramp-up to come in the last quarter? Thank you.
Anna Brunelle
Yes. I mean I think we’re still expecting to see strong revenue growth in the back half of the year. I mean as we mentioned earlier, our pipeline right now is as strong as it’s ever been in Ouster’s history. And so even looking at our revised guidance projections, we’re still guiding up for the rest of the year.
Andres Sheppard
Got it. That’s very helpful. Thanks, Anna. And maybe one quick follow-up for me. In terms of the strategic customer agreements, right? So obviously, great news there, rising the number of agreements to 80 versus 72 previously. I guess just two questions on that. Number one, so how binding are these agreements? And could you give us any color in terms of when exactly they’ll start to translate into revenue and kind of how that works? Thanks.
Angus Pacala
Yes. Thanks for the question. This is Angus here. So the SCA is, as a reminder, they are our effort to provide a high-quality signal to the market. We’ve been very open on what the definition of an SCA, it’s a contract that we signed with the customer that contained a 3 to 5-year forecast for specific Ouster products with specific pricing and unit quantity demand forecast. But it is a non-binding forecast. Some of our SCAs do have a binding component, but all that we – what we report is the contracted revenue opportunity, which is in total $575 million right now. And we’re using this to build better signal on forward projection of the business. Last year, we actually saw a really good alignment of revenue to the forecast from our customers.
We really recognized about 80% of the 2021 revenue that was forecast in SCA for that year in 2021. So it was a really great high-quality signal, just indicating that customers that are willing to spend the time to go through all that paperwork and give us so much information about their long-term efforts that they mean business. They have entered into kind of a design win territory and production. And so in 2022, we’re also seeing SCA customers are a major driver of our business. We’re not having to wait for those to contribute. They are still a major driver of the business. So we’re very happy with how that have turned out. But again, it’s not binding. It’s contracted revenue opportunity, which is – appears to be a pretty high signal. Thanks.
Andres Sheppard
Got it. Understood. Thanks very much, Angus. That’s very helpful and very thorough. Congrats again, guys. I will pass it on. Thank you.
Anna Brunelle
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Brian Dobson from Chardan Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Brian Dobson
Hi, thanks very much for taking my questions. So when you’re thinking about the back half of this year as it pertains to your guidance, can you give us a little bit more color on the seasonality between the third quarter and the fourth quarter?
Anna Brunelle
Yes. I mean we always seem to have – we’ve talked about this quarter-to-quarter. The last couple of years, we’ve had a really strong fourth quarter. And we’ve talked earlier this year about how our pipeline is projecting a strong fourth quarter again this year. So that just seems to be how it’s working out with our customers in terms of their ordering cycles. And so yes, I think that’s the color there.
Angus Pacala
Yes. And keep in mind that things like our SCAs are forecasted on a year basis. So there is a strong push for year-end commitments, but not a strong Q3 push. So there is still a steep ramp for things like the contracts that we have in place.
Brian Dobson
Yes, that’s helpful. So I guess, expanding on your, call it, order book. Could you maybe point to any specific things that give you guidance in meeting your revised guidance range considering it seems like the year will be 4Q heavy.
Anna Brunelle
Yes. Well, I think we do our revenue projections as a bottoms-up projection customer by customer, from our 600 customers. And I think Angus talked about how a good number of those customers about 80 are under SCAs with us giving us 3 or 5-year forecast. So based on that, we roll those numbers up, and that’s how we get to our forecast for this year.
Angus Pacala
Yes. And just if – I’d like to add a little extra color, the – excuse me, the revision in guidance is not a reflection on our overall competitiveness in the market, right? We’re still winning customers time and time again, we feel very good about the products and markets that we have today. We have an incredibly strong back half product road map set for release. And so all of that is building a huge amount of confidence and our ability to meet the revenue guidance that we have on top of the customer information. And I’d also point out that our run rate this quarter is in line with the low end of revised guidance. So we have a lot of confidence in the numbers that we’re providing.
Brian Dobson
Okay. And you pointed to some clients reducing expenses and decelerating production as you’re looking around at your, call it, core industries, which do you see being the most challenged over the next 12 months and which the most opportunity. And if you could give just a little bit more color on the opportunity presenting itself in security, that would be great. Thank you.
Anna Brunelle
Well, I mean, I can start and maybe Angus can add some color. In terms of our growth this year. It’s primarily coming from a few areas that we’ve talked about repeatedly throughout the year. One is that we’re kind of emerging as a leader in robotech trucking. We have several strong A-List customers there. We’ve talked a lot about warehouse automation where we’re seeing a lot of roles that it’s difficult to find labor for these days. And so more and more companies, I think, are investing in warehouse automation to supplement the human potential in their workforce as well as to provide safer and more efficient workplaces. And so that’s a strong area of growth that we’re seeing this year. And then lastly, Smart Infrastructure, where we announced that we’ve been signing quite a few deals and partnerships there and I saw that Angus also wanted to weigh in. So I will let him take the mic.
Angus Pacala
Yes. So, on the security question specifically, there are markets today that we are focused on because they are existing lidar markets that we can convert to digital lidar and grow. And that’s a real driver of the business. And we have a lot of near-term opportunity that is building the year-over-year growth. Security is an example of a new market, new potential where lidar is not really and existing technology, but the market is huge. And we are investing in it because the market is so huge. There is over $32 billion worth of security camera hardware – security cameras that are sold every year. And so even small penetration rates into that market could be an immense opportunity for Ouster. So, that’s why we are investing into new areas like that, while expecting much higher market share from the kind of established lidar markets that we are also operating in.
Brian Dobson
Excellent. And could you expect to see a meaningful contribution from security in 2023?
Angus Pacala
That would be our goal, absolutely. We expect to have a significant contribution over time and trying to do that as quickly as possible. Thanks.
Brian Dobson
Excellent. Thank you very much.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer & Company. Your line is open.
Colin Rusch
Thanks so much guys. Could you talk about your competitive positioning around signal processing certainly, it seems like there are some key advantages that you have got in place that are helping with your customers right now?
Angus Pacala
Yes. And you are talking about an interesting question I haven’t gotten before, but you are talking about signal processing on the sensor?
Colin Rusch
Yes, exactly. And the efficiency of that and how that gets levered through the software applications that you have?
Angus Pacala
Sure. I think that we – digital lidar is actually a collection of technology, the first and foremost is just putting lidar onto a single silicon chip and writing Moore’s Law for a decade to come. But by putting our technology onto that chip, we are actually unlocking immense computational resources into our technology and that computational resources are used for signal processing. So, we are deriving performance and features from signal processing that exists on those chips. We talk about just getting on to the chip, but – if you actually look at our IP portfolio, it spans much more than just semiconductor, it’s signal processing design, algorithm design, chip architectures, which all drives at getting better performing point clouds, better data, higher data rates and things like that, which directly impact kind of the competitiveness of our products in the market. So, that’s really core to the technology, but not something that we have exposed explicitly kind of to the investors or analysts.
Colin Rusch
That’s super helpful. Yes. That’s very, very helpful. And then with the customer commentary around delays and slightly lower production, can you talk a little bit about the root source of this? Is this supply chain issues that they are experiencing customer demand is general preparations for the potential for a recession or are there fundamental product delays. Obviously, there is going to be a handful of reasons, but if we could just get some quantification around some of those elements, that would be really helpful?
Anna Brunelle
Yes. Thanks for the question. I think that’s a good point to take a little bit of time to talk about. What we have been seeing from our customers is really they are slowing their deployment schedule and just taking steps to conserve their cash by staggering or lengthening their purchasing cycles because of concerns around economic recession and the macro environment. And so additionally, we are also hearing that customers are experiencing supply chain bottlenecks and that’s impacting their ability to build products to meet their own demand. And so what Angus mentioned before is, what we are not seeing is we are not seeing us losing customers. We are not seeing some kind of feedback about the products not being a good fit or something of that nature. We are just simply seeing delays and so we are continuing conversations and to execute with these customers. And so while we see these economic headwinds really kind of impacting our near-term top line growth, we don’t see them impacting our overall competitiveness, the strength of our product road map or our expectations for long-term growth.
Colin Rusch
That’s super helpful. Thanks so much.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Richard Shannon from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Your line is open.
Richard Shannon
Thanks Angus and Anna for let me ask a couple of questions here. I think I will follow-up on the last topic here of the guidance here. Very helpful detail you just provided. But maybe if you can look at it a different way here, is there any specific end-markets or geographies that are you seeing more of the effect of the push out? I think I heard you say you are seeing some strength in Europe and Middle East. Maybe does that mean more strength in some of the areas? And maybe you can delineate by the end market that would be helpful, too, please?
Angus Pacala
Yes. I can take that. Hi Richard and thanks for the question. First off, the trends that are slowing growth with some customers are pretty global in nature. The economic environment is global. The supply chain crisis is global. And so I wouldn’t say that there is a specific region or a set of markets that are getting impacted more or less. We saw some great traction in Europe this quarter, but I wouldn’t attribute it to a difference in one of these macro trends that we are talking about. So, hopefully, that’s some helpful color.
Richard Shannon
Okay. That’s helpful. So, a quick question on the SCAs. One of the things I do look at the numbers you give us every quarter is kind of look at the incremental contract value. If I am doing my math right, it’s – the deals here seem to be averaging about $3 million at or per SCA to the overall binding number here, which is pretty low compared to the last several quarters. Of course, that assumes that there is no reduction in the SCA. So, maybe you could ask – if I could ask kind of a two-part question. Are these deals you are seeing, at least in the second quarter, smaller than most quarters. And were there any de-commitments in any way from SCAs in the past?
Angus Pacala
Yes. That’s a great question. So, again, this is SCAs are our effort to make a high signal metric for us and for external communication. And I am perfectly happy to have $3 million to $5 million to $10 million total contracted revenue opportunity SCA deals. I think that’s the way to build conservatism and high signal into our SCA count and the data that we are sharing. So, that’s right in line with our expectations. I think we are – we don’t want to have SCAs that are hundreds of millions of dollars of potential opportunity. That’s not the goal here. It’s to have hundreds of SCAs with credible information that we are providing and have strengthened their aggregate numbers.
Richard Shannon
Okay. But just to be clear, did you have any de-commitments [ph] on the SCAs from the past?
Anna Brunelle
I think Richard, to be frank with you, I know from time-to-time, we have. But usually, like I think we had one company that went out of business a couple of quarters back, things of that nature do happen. And then I think if you are trying to understand the quality of the SCAs better, we did take a historical look at how the SCAs gives the forecast that we get versus the orders that the customers place trend. And we have been seeing about 80% traction to the numbers that were given. So, like Angus said, these are – these are not perfect numbers, but they are the best indicators, the most conservative indicators that we can give to share with you guys.
Richard Shannon
Okay. Appreciate that detail. That’s all for me. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Itay Michaeli from Citi. Your line is open.
Itay Michaeli
Great. Good afternoon everybody. Apologies, I did join the call late, so sorry if you covered this, but just two questions for me. First, just can you give us a sense of how you expect second half revenue that the cadence to proceed between Q3 and Q4? And then more broadly, as you kind of look at the macro slowdown. Just curious kind of how you are managing cost, cash burn, liquidity, kind of different scenarios that you might be running internally to kind of manage various potential outcomes here?
Anna Brunelle
Yes. Great question. Thank you. Yes, we did talk a little bit about the ramp in the back half of the year, and we did talk about how our pipeline is actually the strongest that we have ever seen it. So, we still feel great about the business. And we do still expect to see a good ramp in Q4 like we have in our last two Q4s from our last two fiscal years. But we also expect to see continuous growth in our business. And so yes, I think that’s what we expect. You also had some questions around some of the other initiatives that I talked about in my prepared remarks, where we kind of view ourselves as having kind of three key areas to strengthen our financial position right now when we are kind of facing these macroeconomic headwinds. And one of them is to put into place strategic fundraising, which we did and previously announced. And one is to really focus on targeting our spend and ensuring that every dollar that we spend is necessary because it’s just so important that we are weighing the cost of dilutive capital against the cost to grow the business. And so we are taking that to heart. And then lastly, just really focusing on ways to accelerate our growth, to focus on our commercial efforts on our largest customers in our most established markets. And as you know, on the manufacturing side, we continue to reduce our bill of materials over time and continue to get stronger and stronger margins as we increase our volumes. And so I think combining those things, we feel like we are on a good path right now and that we have the strength in our business plan, the flexibility in our business plan and the liquidity in our business plan to really execute on the business growth that we are seeing now and into the future.
Itay Michaeli
Great. That’s all very helpful. Thank you.
Operator
And this does conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Angus Pacala for any closing remarks.
Angus Pacala
Alright. Well, thanks everyone for joining the call and for all the questions. I also wanted to thank the Ouster team for all their hard work over the first half of the year. We have all built Ouster into the largest growing public lidar company. And our team and our products and our competitiveness have never been better. And I am truly looking forward to our continued success. So, I want to thank everyone again, and have a great evening.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines at this time.
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