Mobileye (NASDAQ: MBLY) founder and CEO Amnon Shashua has expressed confidence in the stock after its sharp decline. According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, Shashua bought $10.4 million worth of Mobileye shares on Friday, at prices between $15.50 and $17. In all, Shashua bought about 632,000 Mobileye shares.
Israeli company Mobileye develops and produces ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) solutions.
With parent Intel’s stock price crashing on Friday, Mobileye completed a painful 24% slide in the last two sessions of last week. That came on the heels of Mobileye’s fiscal second-quarter earnings release and a slashed outlook for 2024. The advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) company, led by founder Amnon Shashua, disappointed the market with revised guidance, sending its stock price well below its initial public offering price.
Intel floated Mobileye on the Nasdaq in late 2022 at $21 a share, valuing the company at $17 billion. It closed yesterday at $15.18, giving it a market cap of $12.2 billion, though the stock rose 4.3% in after-hours trading. Moreover, Mobileye’s stock price has fallen 66% since its peak in February 2023. After long being the most valuable Israeli company on Wall Street, it has been overtaken by cybersecurity firm Check Point and pharmaceutical company Teva.
Mobileye now expects revenue of $1.6 billion to $1.68 billion in 2024, down 21% from 2023 and down from $1.83 billion to $1.96 billion in its previous guidance. Full-year operating loss is expected to be $531 million to $580 million, and adjusted net income is expected to be $152 million to $201 million.
Mobily’s share price has been in a negative trend since the beginning of this year. Late last week, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed another reason for the pressure on the stock in recent months: Norway’s Norges Bank has sold more than half of its stake in Mobily since April.
At the end of July, the bank owned 5.2% of Mobily’s Class A shares, compared to about 10.7% in mid-April. The bank was one of the main investors in Mobily’s initial public offering.
Commenting on the second quarter results, Shashua said: “We are pleased to report that the excess inventory at Tier 1 customers that materially impacted our business in the first half of 2024 appears to be almost entirely behind us, but the more significant easing of operating conditions in China (which impacts the industry as a whole) is expected to present challenges in the second half… Our primary focus for the rest of 2024 is to successfully execute our existing advanced programs and convert the unprecedented opportunity set we are currently pursuing into serial production awards.”
This article was published in Globes, Israeli Business News – en.globes.co.il – on August 6, 2024.
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