Recently, Mobileye, an autonomous driving company owned by Intel, filed a confidential initial public offering (IPO) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The IPO is expected to be the largest IPO on the U.S. stock market this year. According to Reuters' earlier disclosure, Mobileye's valuation is as high as 50 billion US dollars, which is about 316.1 billion yuan at the current exchange rate.

Mobileye: ADAS pioneer?

Mobileye, which was born in Israel, was founded as early as 1999 by well-known professor Amnon Shashua. It can be called a traditional giant in the autonomous driving arena. What is talked about by the outside world is that Mobileye has been devoted to research and development for the first eight years after its establishment, and has not launched any products. It did not release its first self-driving chip, the Eye Q1, until 2007. So far, the chip products have been sold accumulatively. 100 million, we know BMW, Audi, Volvo and Weilai, Ideal, Great Wall all have this chip.

At first glance, Mobileye is an unfamiliar name and a distant Israeli company, but as the leader of the autonomous driving industry, it is not far from our lives. With a chip, a camera and a set of algorithms, Mobileye has pioneered many complex functions, such as lane departure warning, pedestrian automatic emergency braking, forward collision warning, and automatic cruise.

In the field of L2 level autonomous driving, Mobileye is in a leading position. It has a very high market share in the ADAS (Advanced Assisted Autonomous Driving) market. According to data from Gartner, in 2021, Mobileye will receive new orders for ADAS projects for 41 models from more than 30 automakers around the world, involving about 50 million new vehicles.

Why did Intel choose to list Mobileye at this time?

First of all: there are prospects, the future of autonomous driving is good, and the industry track financing continues. In recent years, investors have poured money into global transportation sectors such as self-driving cars, optimistic about their future prospects. In recent years, there has been continuous investment and financing in the field of autonomous driving. According to the statistics of Yiou, in 2021 alone, there will be 107 investment events in the field of autonomous driving in China, with a cumulative amount of 57.5 billion yuan.

Official information shows that Mobileye is a supplier of advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving solutions, with a leading position in computer vision, machine learning, data analysis, positioning and smart travel. Intel listed Mobileye this time to maximize the value of its assets by capitalizing on the market's demand for self-driving cars.

Secondly: Money King, Mobileye's financial performance and EyeQ series chip sales are strong. According to the data, since it was acquired by Intel in 2017, Mobileye’s revenue has increased by nearly three times. In terms of financial data, according to Intel’s financial report, Mobileye’s total revenue in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 was US$698 million, US$879 million, US$967 million and US$1.386 billion, respectively. From 2019 to 2021, the annual revenue growth rate will be 26%, 10% and 43% respectively. The compound annual growth rate from 2018 to 2021 is as high as 26.1%.

Finally, it should be reminded that Mobileye is currently facing serious loss of major customers, fierce competition in the industry, and technological lag. In the process of going public and privatization, if it faces more competition from technology giants, Google, Apple, GM, Ford, Huawei, and Baidu have successively launched explorations in the field of autonomous driving, and have made certain progress. Although Mobileye's future is still promising, considering the increasingly "white-hot" competition in the autonomous driving industry, the best time to go public may be now.

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Article data source: AutoUpdate