Valens Semiconductor Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Valens Semiconductor (NYSE:VLN) reported third-quarter financial results on Wednesday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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Summary

Valens Semiconductor exceeded Q3 revenue guidance with $21.9 million and achieved a GAAP gross margin of 62.2%. Q3 2026 gross profit was $13.6 million, with a segment gross margin of 66.8% for Cross Industry business and 53.9% for Automotive.

The company announced a strategic shift to expand from premium-only markets into mainstream higher-volume markets, focusing on video conferencing and automotive sectors. Operational highlights included product launches with Jabra and Crestron and progress in mainstream automotive market penetration.

A significant strategic collaboration with onsemi aims to integrate A-PHY connectivity into automotive image sensors, targeting mainstream 3-megapixel cameras. The company is developing system-level products to capture more value and leverage its acquisition of Acroname for enhanced offerings.

Valens Semiconductor reaffirmed its full-year 2026 revenue guidance between $78 million to $81 million, expecting to be at the higher end. Management expressed a positive outlook for future growth driven by new product categories and system-level solutions.

Full Transcript

Yoram Salinger (Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you, Mikey, hello everyone and thank you all for joining us. It has been now a year since I joined Valens Semiconductor and it’s been a year of significant progress for the company. We’ve achieved some important revenue milestones, refocused our energies on our core market, and laid the groundwork for our new growth strategy. The significance of this strategy is that it expands the markets we can serve, increases the value we can capture per deployment, and creates additional growth opportunities beyond our traditional premium applications.

I’ll share more details about this growth plan later in the call, but first let’s go over the Q3 highlights. This quarter we exceeded the top end of our revenue guidance at $21.9 million with a GAAP gross margin of 62.2%, again above our guidance, and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $2.7 million, slightly better than our guidance. Over the course of the quarter, a number of high-profile companies released new products to the market based on our most cutting-edge chipsets, the VS3000 and the VS6320, including SCT, Bluestream and Atlona.

We’ve been highlighting the growing adoption of these chipsets over the recent quarters and these examples show how that momentum is now translating into real products reaching the market. An important product release I want to mention took place in September when our customer Jabra launched its new Reach product. The Reach allows users to connect their laptops to meeting rooms, camera displays, microphones and speakers through a single USB-C cable. And of course our HDBaseT connectivity technology is at the heart of the solution. Jabra is one of the biggest and most recognized names in professional video conferencing with a significant global presence.

The company’s embrace of HDBaseT technology for their latest product is another important endorsement of the technology, demonstrating its growing relevance in modern video conferencing environments and its potential for broader adoption across the industry. And now we arrive at the central theme of today’s earnings call, a new growth plan for Valens Semiconductor. At the core, this plan represents a meaningful shift in how Valens Semiconductor approaches the market. Historically we’ve been a premium-only company focused on high-performance applications. Going forward, we’re going to build on that foundation while expanding into mainstream higher-volume markets.

Let’s start with audio-video. This is our mature foundation. The underlying market grows organically at a moderate pace. What we have built is a growth strategy layered on top of the market designed to grow considerably faster than it does. One of the major trends driving our growth strategy is what we call video everywhere. Think about the meeting room you see here. Not long ago, video connectivity would have been relatively simple, perhaps a projector and a single display.

Today, that same room might have multiple displays, cameras, interactive devices and a range of USB peripherals, all needing to communicate with each other, all needing to stretch back to a central processor, often over distances that standard cables cannot support. Today, that typically means additional external extension boxes for each peripheral. More boxes, more cables, more power supplies, and ultimately more cost and complexity. And as video becomes more widespread, this problem only gets bigger.

We believe our technology is well positioned to address this challenge and we actually see it as an opportunity to expand our market. Our vision is to enable a new kind of meeting room: simple, slick and elegant, with the connectivity built directly into devices and with new flexible ways for installers to connect the growing number of devices in the room. We’re approaching this in two ways. First, by embedding our chipsets directly into new product categories, eliminating the need for external extension boxes. And second, by moving up the value chain and selling complete connectivity products rather than just the chipsets inside them.

Let’s start with the first growth layer, expanding into new product categories. Our existing solutions were designed for premium applications where customers need the highest bandwidth and longest reach. But when you want to embed connectivity directly into devices like cameras, video bars and touch controllers, the requirements are different. The solution needs to be smaller, consume less power and be cost-effective enough to be integrated directly into the product.

And that’s why we developed the VS6310 chipset, which we announced last week. The VS6310 is optimized for lower bandwidth, shorter distances and significantly lower power consumption. These are deliberate trade-offs that allow us to address product categories that were previously beyond our reach. By working with our OEM customers and partners to embed our technology directly inside their devices, we can expand our addressable markets, strengthen our relationships and create new opportunities for long-term growth.

And the opportunity expands well beyond a single device category. Think again about that meeting room. You have the room PC, touch controller, video bar and the PTZ camera. Each represents a separate market opportunity with its own manufacturers and product cycles. Our plan is to bring Valens Semiconductor connectivity into each of these categories over the coming years. With this growth layer, we have an opportunity to capture a significantly higher share of the video conferencing market.

On to the second growth layer, selling system-level products. Here is how our business has worked until now: we sell a chipset and an OEM designs a product around it and moves it along the chain. We capture value at the first step and nothing after it. We see an opportunity to move one step up, selling finished system-level products directly to distributors and in some cases directly to installers and integrators. By selling finished products, we can capture significantly more value from our technology.

The core of our offering is, as always, the Valens Semiconductor connectivity chip. But to execute on this strategy, we are leveraging the capabilities we gained through our acquisition of Acroname in 2024. We are adding value beyond the silicon through a new software layer. This combines Valens link monitoring and performance analytics capabilities with Acroname’s proprietary BrainStem technology, giving customers greater visibility and control over their connectivity systems.

And finally, Acroname brings the product, engineering and manufacturing expertise needed to turn those technologies into complete market-ready products. By bringing three layers together, we’re leveraging Acroname’s know-how and expertise to accelerate our product strategy, move up the value chain and deliver more value to our customers. And it’s not just one or two products either. We are building an entire catalog of connectivity solutions including dongles, extender boxes, active cables, mini extenders and adapters. The goal is to give our customers more choice and flexibility with solutions for a wide range of installation requirements.

For Valens Semiconductor, every new product represents another opportunity to expand our market reach, capture more value and ultimately sell more chipsets. We’ve already seen early successes that validate and demonstrate the potential of this strategy. A few months ago, market leader Crestron launched its innovative Collab Compute Room PC which includes HDBaseT embedded within. As for our strategy of selling system-level products, we’ve proven successes there as well. In 2024, we have developed a USB and power extension solution for a leading manufacturer of video conference products. And last year we created a joint USB 3 and 4K video extension solution with a company which has already seen significant revenue commitments.

We’re now taking what has already proven successful on a case-by-case basis and turning it into a systematic engine for growth. Let’s go back to our meeting room and see what this strategy means in practice. Today, connecting all those devices requires multiple external extension boxes, cables and power supplies. But as our technology becomes embedded directly into more peripherals and as we introduce new system-level products, we can significantly simplify the infrastructure. Fewer external boxes, fewer connections, simpler installation. Some of our chipsets will be embedded inside video conferencing products like touch controllers or inside video bars which have become commonplace in conference rooms of all sizes.

Some will be embedded inside external cameras, spread across the room to get better views of participants for hybrid environments, and some will be offered as part of a full system-level product that we’ll design and manufacture ourselves, like dongles and active cables. Our two growth layers interplay with one another, creating an ecosystem of interoperable designs and increasing the stickiness of Valens Semiconductor products. This is how we believe we can transform our position in the video conferencing market over the coming years.

The shift from premium-only to mainstream isn’t limited to our audio-video business. We’re going to go mainstream in our other core market as well: automotive. Here, we’re going to do it by building strategic partnerships with leading industry players to address the barriers that have limited broader adoption of our technology. Before I explain that strategy, it’s worth remembering what we have already achieved in automotive. We entered the market with our VA6000 chipset, developed for infotainment connectivity. We secured a major design win with Mercedes-Benz and our technology has been on the road since 2020. Today it’s used across Mercedes-Benz passenger vehicle models, demonstrating that we can deliver highly reliable, high-performance connectivity at automotive scale.

But the much larger opportunity lies with MIPI A-PHY. Our VA7000 was the first chipset on the market compliant with this automotive connectivity standard and we’ve already secured four A-PHY design wins, with production expected to begin in 2027. These wins are important milestones. They demonstrate growing confidence in the technology and position us for future revenue growth. But to realize the full potential of A-PHY, we need to go further. Despite our progress, adoption of A-PHY has remained largely concentrated in premium automotive applications. There are three main reasons. First, the automotive industry is understandably cautious about introducing new technologies, particularly in safety-critical systems. Second, our existing solution is optimized for premium applications, offering high bandwidth and longest reach, the lowest error rate, but at a premium price.

And third, OEMs need confidence in their supply chains. That means having multiple established suppliers supporting the same standard. To unlock the mainstream market, we need to address these challenges. One of our most important achievements this quarter was securing a strategic collaboration with onsemi, which we announced towards the end of September. This is a major milestone in our efforts to bring A-PHY into the automotive mainstream. Let me explain what makes this collaboration so important. Today, a typical automotive camera contains two separate components: an image sensor and a serializer that transmits its data. Together with onsemi, we are developing a solution that integrates A-PHY connectivity directly into a 3-megapixel image sensor.

By eliminating the need for a separate serializer, we can reduce component count, simplify camera design and, importantly, lower the overall costs. And the partnership goes well beyond product integration. onsemi brings established automotive customer relationships, its own manufacturing capabilities and a global presence in automotive image sensors. Together, we are developing a cost-competitive solution that provides OEMs with a credible second source for A-PHY technology and creates a foundation for joint go-to-market activities.

This is a significant step forward, bringing A-PHY into the automotive mainstream. And I think that Ahmed Salem, VP and General Manager of Intelligent Sensing Group at onsemi, captured the significance of this collaboration well. As he put it, through our collaboration with Valens, we’re helping enable a more streamlined camera architecture that reduces component count, supports industry standards and ultimately makes advanced vision systems easier to deploy. And that’s exactly what the mainstream automotive market needs: simpler, more cost-effective solutions that can be adopted at scale.

You can see here how this expands our opportunity. At the high end, we’re already addressing 8-megapixel front ADAS cameras with our VA7000 technology, including our collaboration with Sony. The much larger volume opportunity is in mainstream 3-megapixel cameras. These are used in applications such as surround view, side and rear ADAS, and electronic mirrors. Through our collaboration with onsemi, we’re expanding into these applications with the most cost-competitive integrated sensor solution.

The result is a much more comprehensive A-PHY offering covering both premium and mainstream automotive camera applications. And the significance of this expansion becomes clear when we look at the market opportunity. Our traditional premium segment represents a relatively small portion of the overall automotive camera market. By entering mainstream applications, we’re opening up access to a substantially larger market. And importantly, we’re doing it through a standardized technology that can carry the automotive industry into higher levels of ADAS and eventually to full autonomous driving.

With that, I turn the call to Karine, our CFO, to discuss our financial performance for the third quarter.

Pinto Karine Flomenboim (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you, Yoram, and hello everyone. Let me dive into our third quarter 2026 results. In more detail, we grew quarterly revenue to $21.9 million, which exceeded our guidance of between $21.3 million to $21.7 million. This compares to revenue of $18.1 million in Q2 2026 and $17.3 million in Q3 2025. The Cross Industry business, or CIB, accounted for $14 million, or approximately 65% of total revenue, while Automotive contributed $7.9 million, or approximately 35% of total revenue this quarter.

This compares to Q2 2026 revenue of $13.1 million from the CIB and $5 million from the Automotive, which represents approximately 70% and 30% of total revenue, respectively. It also compares to Q3 2025 revenue of $13.2 million from the CIB and $4.1 million from the Automotive, representing 75% and 25% of total revenue, respectively. Q3 2026 gross profit was $13.6 million compared to $11.1 million in Q2 2026 and compared to $10.9 million in Q3 2025. Q3 2026 gross margin was 62.2% compared to our guidance of between 60% and 62%. This compares to a Q2 2026 gross margin of 61.5% and Q3 2025 of 63%. On a segment basis, Q3 2026 gross margin from the CIB was 66.8% and gross margin from the Automotive was 53.9%. This compares to Q2 2026 gross margin of 69.2% and 41.5%, respectively, and to Q3 2025 gross margin of 69.1% and 43.2%, respectively.

The increase in Q3 Automotive gross margin compared to Q2 2026 was mainly due to lower testing facility expenses incurred to prioritize and support production requirements, as well as a change in our product mix. The decrease in Q3 CIB gross margin compared to Q2 2026 and Q3 2025 was mainly due to a change in our product mix. Non-GAAP gross margin in Q3 2026 was 64.4%, which compares to 64.3% in Q2 2026 and 66.7% in Q3 2025. Operating expenses in Q3 2026 totaled $19.9 million compared to $19.1 million in Q2 2026 and $19 million in Q3 2025. Research and development expenses in Q3 2026 totaled $10.8 million compared to $10.1 million in Q2 2026 and $10.8 million in Q3 2025. The increase in R&D expenses was primarily driven by tape-out costs related to a new chip production. GAAP net loss in Q3 2026 was $5.5 million compared to a net loss of million in Q2 2026 and a net loss of $7.3 million in Q3 2025.

SG&A expenses in Q3 2026 were $9.2 million compared to $9 million in Q2 2026 and $7.4 million in Q3 2025. The year-over-year increase related mainly to last year’s income from a batch production incident recognized for insurance claim payments. Adjusted EBITDA in Q3 2026 was a loss of $2.7 million, better than the guidance range of a loss between $3.4 million and $2.8 million. This compares to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $4.2 million in Q2 2026 and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $4.3 million in Q3 2025.

Adjusted EBITDA improvement is related mainly to revenue increase, partially offset by tape-out costs. GAAP loss per share in Q3 2026 was $0.05 compared to a loss of $0.08 in Q2 2026 and a loss of $0.07 in Q3 2025. Non-GAAP loss per share in Q3 2026 was $0.02 compared to a loss of $0.04 in Q2 2026 and a loss of $0.04 in Q3 2025. The difference between GAAP and non-GAAP loss per share was mainly due to stock-based compensation, as well as depreciation and amortization expenses.

Now turning to the balance sheet, we ended Q3 2026 with cash, cash equivalents and short-term bank deposits totaling $74.7 million and with no debt. This compares to $83.4 million as of June 30, 2026 and $92.6 million as of December 31, 2025. The decrease in cash primarily reflects timing differences in collections driven by the higher volume of revenue recognized toward the end of the third quarter and are expected to be collected in the following quarter in line with standard payment terms.

Our inventory as of September 30, 2026 was $13.1 million, an increase from $12.5 million on June 30, 2026 and $10.1 million on December 31, 2025. Now I would like to discuss our guidance for the full year of 2026. We are reaffirming our previously announced guidance for the full year 2026 to be between $78 million to $81 million, toward the upper end of the range. We expect full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $14.9 and $12.9 million loss. I’ll now turn the call back to Yoram for his closing remarks before opening the call for Q&A.

Yoram Salinger (Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you, Karine. I’m excited to share our new growth strategy which opens the door to new possibilities and expands our horizons. This strategic direction will unlock new business opportunities, attract new customers and drive sustainable growth. I look forward to the opportunities ahead as we continue to push boundaries across the markets we serve. With that, I’ll now open the call to answer your questions.

OPERATOR (Moderator)

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Quinn Bolton with Needham.

Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Quinn Bolton (Analyst)

Hi Yoram and Karine, congratulations on the nice results and outlook on the new strategy. I guess, Yoram, at a high level the new strategy certainly looks like it can accelerate the company’s revenue growth rate as you expand into the mainstream markets and you move to system-level solutions. But I’m wondering if you can talk about the gross margin impact of moving into a mainstream market which may be lower cost, as well as as you move into system-level solutions, can you keep semiconductor-like margins selling complete solutions?

And then I’ve got a follow up. Thank you.

Yoram Salinger (Chief Executive Officer)

So basically, if I kind of assess your question, you’re asking two separate questions. One is getting into a lower-cost semiconductor chipsets, the 6310 in that example, and then the system-level products. So we believe that the impact in the near future, speaking about 2027, won’t be impact. So the gross margin due to the two growth strategies when it comes to, when it comes to audio-video would not impact 2027. When you move into system-level products, it all comes down to the sophistication of the solutions that you’re trying to build. As we have highlighted, we’re in the connectivity business and everything we are doing is in and around the chipsets of lens and therefore building active cables, dongles as such, is an area where we believe we could maintain the gross margin and if there is going to be an impact, it’s not going to be substantial impacting our overall gross margin.

When it comes to the automotive, obviously the deal with Onsemi is a completely different story.

Quinn Bolton (Analyst)

And I guess maybe can you expand on the Onsemi relationship? Will you be designing the lower-cost AFI device? Will you license your technology to Onsemi who will build the device itself?

Yoram Salinger (Chief Executive Officer)

So I think we’ve highlighted that, and I’ll repeat it again. So the engineering work is already going for several months. We’ve announced the deal in September. So it’s a collaboration between Valens and Onsemi. At the end of the day the chip is going to be an Onsemi chip. And we have highlighted that Onsemi, as one of the leading sensor vendors in the world, and they would be leveraging their fab in order to produce that chipset. So it’s a technological collaboration which at the end of the day would be marketed to the market by Onsemi and ourselves.

But it’s going to be an Onsemi product.

Quinn Bolton (Analyst)

Excellent. And then the follow up question. I had the automotive segment at $7.9 million certainly I think hit a recent high. Can you talk about the automotive strength in the September quarter? What drove that strength? And do you expect auto revenue to continue at this higher level? Or was there something one-time in nature in the third quarter that drove that very strong performance in auto? Thank you.

Yoram Salinger (Chief Executive Officer)

So I will let Karine answer that.

Pinto Karine Flomenboim (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you. So first we need to understand Valens is in all of Mercedes-Benz passenger models. So we are subjected directly to the sales and the demand by Mercedes-Benz in that respect specifically, quarterly. We do see some sort of seasonality in that respect which is impacting specifically the Q2 and Q3, between Q2 and Q3 revenue. But we will see this level continuing, again based on Mercedes-Benz demand.

Quinn Bolton (Analyst)

Excellent, thank you.

OPERATOR (Moderator)

Your next question comes from the line of Trevor Bowers with Oppenheimer. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Trevor Bowers (Analyst)

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I have another question on auto. So gross margin improved quite a bit quarter over quarter. You mentioned mix and lower testing costs. How should we think about gross margin going forward for auto? Are the increased testing costs fully in the rearview, or are there still some of those that you’re navigating?

Pinto Karine Flomenboim (Chief Financial Officer)

So again, we explained it specifically and it relates, of course, to product mix and lower testing costs. So the testing costs are not to be foreseen? We do not know. We have, of course, supply management additional cost related which we cannot forecast. So we expect that the margin will stay at the range and at the level that we saw up until today. We do know that we have a mix between some of our products that are also impacting our margin and we expect going forward to have more revenue from more profitable models.

So this will slightly impact. And again, on the other hand, we do not know to foresee the expenses that will be associated from supply management issues.

Trevor Bowers (Analyst)

Okay, great, thank you.

OPERATOR (Moderator)

Your next question comes from the line of Dave Storms with Stonegate. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Dave Storms (Analyst)

Morning and thank you for taking my questions. Apologies, I did join late, so if these have been answered, apologies for that. I did just maybe want to start with some of the tape-out costs that were mentioned as impact on the quarter. How should we be thinking about these going into year end?

Pinto Karine Flomenboim (Chief Financial Officer)

So these are specific costs related to our R&D process, and of course they are completely placed, planned and forecast. This was actually part of a tape-out cost. It’s called shuttle and it’s lower in expenses. We do have our new product, the VC500, which we are in process of full design and we do expect upon finalization of the development of this process to have additional much more significant tape-out cost and it will be, of course, embedded in our guidance which we will give for next year.

Dave Storms (Analyst)

Understood, really appreciate that. And then again apologies if this has already been asked, but there was an impact on the CIB gross margins. Any drivers here to highlight the sustainability impacts going forward?

Pinto Karine Flomenboim (Chief Financial Officer)

So again, specifically for this quarter we had it was some sort of product mix but going forward, and it’s as I said for the automotive, we expect it to be upon the run rate that we saw up until today, excluding a caveat of supply management additional costs that are yet to be foreseen. Again, we’re managing it, we’re doing a lot of work in order to maintain this and mitigate it, but currently we don’t know if it will add additional costs.

Dave Storms (Analyst)

Completely understand. Thank you for taking my questions and good luck in the next quarter.

OPERATOR (Moderator)

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Yoram for closing remarks.

Yoram Salinger (Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you for joining us today and for your continued interest in Valens Semiconductor. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Goodbye.

OPERATOR (Moderator)

This concludes today’s call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

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