Intel’s stock drops as well as chip giant holds majority economic interest in Mobileye
Shares of Mobileye Global Inc. were tanking in Thursday’s premarket action after the company, which makes self-driving technology, issued a revenue warning as its customers deal with excess inventory.
Mobileye (MBLY) said it expects first-quarter revenue to fall about 50% from the $458 million that it reported in the year-earlier period. Analysts tracked by FactSet had expected revenue to rise to $557 million for the period.
The company disclosed in a press release that it has “become aware of excess inventory at our customers,” representing an estimated 6 million to 7 million units of the company’s EyeQ product. “As supply chain concerns have eased, we expect that our customers will use the vast majority of this excess inventory in the first quarter of the year,” Mobileye said.
Shares were down more than 25% in premarket activity. Shares of Intel Corp. (INTC) were off about 4%; the chip giant spun out Mobileye through a 2022 initial public offering but still held about 88% of the outstanding equity interest in Mobileye as of the end of September 2023.
The volume shortfall could impact profits as well, the company warned. “Similar to revenue, we expect Q1 profit levels to be significantly below the subsequent quarters,” Mobileye said, projecting a first-quarter operating loss of $242 million to $257 million.
Mobileye noted that the issue of excess customer inventories could impact revenues “to a much lesser extent” in the balance of 2024. “As a result, we expect revenue for Q2 through Q4 2024 on a combined basis to be roughly flat to up mid single-digits as compared to the same period in 2023, and we expect inventory at our customers to be at normal levels by the end of 2024,” the company said.
Its full-year outlook calls for $1.83 billion to $1.96 billion in revenue, whereas analysts were modeling $2.56 billion.