SAN JOSE, Calif. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — March 14, 2023 — Cepton, Inc. (“Cepton”) (Nasdaq: CPTN), a Silicon Valley innovator and leader in high performance lidar solutions, today announced business updates and financials for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2022.

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“We closed out our first year as a public company with notable achievements,” said Jun Pei, Cepton’s Co-Founder and CEO. “We are in the final stages of preparation for the start of the production launch of our lidar for OEM customers, we announced our next-generation Vista^®-X120 Plus lidar to meet future OEM requirements and closed the $100 million investment from Koito. We look forward to capitalizing on our extensive experience in commercializing automotive grade lidar to win additional series production awards this year,” Jun Pei added.

Koito Investment

• Closed $100 million investment from Koito Manufacturing Co., Ltd. of Japan (“Koito”), in the form of convertible preferred stock (“CPS”) on January 19, 2023
• The CPS will be convertible into shares of Cepton’s common stock at an initial conversion price of $2.585 per share (subject to adjustment), beginning on January 19, 2024

Business Highlights

OEM Series Production Execution

• Additional details of the safe deployment of hands-free technology, including placement of Cepton lidar, shared by our OEM customer on March 7, 2023
• Shipped pre-production units across multiple vehicle platforms to support the deployment on more vehicles, in more regions at more price points

Automotive

• Continued to advance toward series production awards at global top-10 OEMs where we have completed the RFI process
• In discussions with our current OEM customer for additional vehicle models and to extend program duration
  • Current award has an estimated value of over $1 billion dollars

Smart Infrastructure

• Won multi-million dollar sales contract from one of the largest highway tolling system operators in the U.S.

Technology

• Unveiled next-generation Vista X-120 Plus at CES 2023, winner of the Vehicle Technology & Advanced Mobility Innovation Award
• Taped out new imaging processing ASIC, complementing our industry leading signal processing ASIC, as we continue to execute our ASIC roadmap
• Current Chief Technology Officer (“CTO”) Dr. Mark McCord to chair Cepton's newly created Technology Advisory Board and remain in charge of Cepton’s IP portfolio. Dr. Dongyi Liao is promoted to CTO as Cepton emphasizes the value of software in its expanding deployment of automotive lidar in the coming years
  • Dr. Dongyi Liao joined Cepton in 2017 and is currently responsible for all software efforts at Cepton. Prior to Cepton, Dr. Liao spent ten years in various engineering and management roles at NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) and was instrumental in NVIDIA’s early successes. Dr. Liao has a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Financial Highlights

Revenue

• Achieved full year 2022 revenue of $7.4 million, within the revenue guidance for the year, an increase of 65% from the prior year
• Fourth quarter 2022 product revenue was $1.0 million and full year product revenue was $5.6 million
• Fourth quarter 2022 development revenue was $0.6 million and full year development revenue was $1.8 million

Operating Expenses

• Full year 2022 GAAP operating expenses of $61.6 million was within the operating expense guidance of $55 million to $65 million
• Excluding transaction related expenses, other one-time and non-cash items, operating expenses were $50.4 million, below the operating expense guidance of $55 million to $65 million

Net Income and Non-GAAP Net Loss

• Fourth quarter 2022 GAAP net loss was $15.3 million, or $(0.10) per share, basic and diluted, and full year GAAP net income was $9.4 million, or $0.06 per share, basic and diluted
• Fourth quarter 2022 Non-GAAP net loss was $13.4 million, or $(0.09) per share, basic and diluted, and full year Non-GAAP net loss was $53.2 million, or $(0.36) per share, basic and diluted

Adjusted EBITDA

• Fourth quarter 2022 adjusted EBITDA was $(12.3) million, and full year adjusted EBITDA was $(50.3) million

Full Year 2023 Financial Outlook

• Full year 2023 revenue is expected to be between $15 million to $20 million
• Expected operating expenses to be in line with FY 2022

Conference Call Details

Cepton will host a live conference call and webcast to discuss the business updates and results at 2:30 p.m. PT (5:30 p.m. ET) today. The live call can be accessed by dialing 877-300-8521 (toll free) or 1-412-317-6026 (international) and by webcast at https://investors.cepton.com/.

A telephonic replay of the conference call will be available approximately two hours after the live call and until March 28, 2023, and can be accessed by dialing 844-512-2921 (toll free) or 1-412-317-6671 (international) and entering the passcode 10175817. An archived webcast of the conference call will be accessible on Cepton’s Investor Relations page at https://investors.cepton.com/.

About Cepton, Inc.

Cepton is a Silicon Valley innovator of lidar-based solutions for automotive (ADAS/AV), smart cities, smart spaces, and smart industrial applications. With its patented lidar technology, Cepton aims to take lidar mainstream and achieve a balanced approach to performance, cost and reliability, while enabling scalable and intelligent 3D perception solutions across industries.

Cepton has been awarded a significant ADAS lidar series production award with Koito on the General Motors business. Cepton is also engaged with all Top 10 global OEMs.

Founded in 2016 and led by industry veterans with decades of collective experience across a wide range of advanced lidar and imaging technologies, Cepton is focused on the mass market commercialization of high performance, high quality lidar solutions. Cepton is headquartered in San Jose, CA and has a center of excellence facility in Troy, MI to provide local support to automotive customers in the Metro Detroit area. Cepton also has a presence in Germany, Canada, Japan, China and India to serve a fast-growing global customer base. For more information, visit www.cepton.com and follow Cepton on Twitter and LinkedIn. Information on or that can be accessed through our website, our Twitter account, our LinkedIn account, or that is contained in any website to which a hyperlink is provided herein is not part of this press release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical or current fact included in this press release are forward-looking statements. The statements included under Full Year 2023 Financial Outlook above as well as any other statements that refer to projections, forecasts or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as “estimate,” “objective,” “plan,” “project,” “forecast,” “intend,” “will,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “seek,” “target,” “milestone,” “designed to,” “proposed” or other similar expressions that predict or imply future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. Cepton cautions readers of this press release that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, most of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond Cepton’s control, that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the expected results. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding estimates and forecasts of financial and performance metrics, projections of market opportunity, future sensor sales numbers and market share, potential benefits and the commercial attractiveness to its customers of Cepton’s products and services, the potential success of Cepton’s marketing and expansion strategies, and the potential for Cepton to achieve design awards.