Arbe Robotics Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Strategic Pivot to Defense, Robotaxi and Non-Auto Markets as CEO Transition Extends Runway

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Arbe Robotics’ fourth quarter and full year 2025 results conference call. All participants are at present in listen-only mode. Following management’s formal presentation, instructions will be given for the question and answer session. For operator assistance, please press star zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. You should have all received the company’s press release by now. If you have not, please check the company’s website at www.arberobotics.com or call EK Global Investor Relations. I would now hand over the call to Mr. Kenny Green of EK Global Investor Relations. Mr. Green, would you like to begin?

Kenny Green, Investor Relations, EK Global Investor Relations: Thank you. Good day to all of you, welcome to Arbe’s conference call to discuss the results of the fourth quarter and full year 2025. Before we begin, I would like to remind our listeners that certain information provided on this call may contain forward-looking statements, the safe harbor statement outlined in today’s earnings release also pertains to this call. If you have not received a copy of the release, please view it in the investor relations section of the company’s website. Today, we are joined by Kobi Marenko, Arbe’s Co-founder and CEO, who will begin with a business update. We’ll turn the call over to Ms. Karine Pinto-Flomenboim, CFO, who will review the financials, and Mr. Ram Machness, Arbe’s Chief Business Officer. Finally, we will open the call up to our listeners for the question and answer session.

With that, I’d like to open it over to Kobi Marenko. Kobi, please go ahead.

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: Thank you, Kenny. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review Arbe’s fourth quarter and full year 2025 results, as well as our strategic direction and outlook for 2026. Over the past few months, we conducted a full strategic review and made a number of refinements. We have broadened our focus to markets which we believe have shorter adoption cycles and clearer near-term revenue opportunities, while at the same time keeping an eye on the longer-term target of winning major OEM deals. This change in focus is because we see strong momentum in defense, homeland security, and other transportation applications beyond passenger vehicles, where we are seeing growing commercial traction.

We also took actions to improve efficiencies, reducing our cost base by about 15%, enhanced our balance sheet with an institutional-led $18.5 million financing that we closed a few weeks ago, extending our financial runway to fully support our next phase of execution. In this call, I want to provide more color on our strategic evolution, highlight recent commercial progress, and outline our expectations for 2026. Adoption timelines for level three autonomy in Western markets remain uncertain. In contrast, Chinese OEMs, including a new win, which we recently announced, are advancing in autonomous and sensing technologies. Beyond that, we see near-term revenue opportunities that can serve as meaningful growth engine for Arbe. We decided to broaden our marketing and sales focus beyond Western automotive OEM programs.

We are prioritizing Chinese OEMs as well as markets, including defense, homeland security, robotaxi, marine safety, and smart infrastructure, where our ultra-high-resolution radar provides clear differentiation. The opportunities in our pipeline tend to have shorter sales cycles. I do want to point out that Western automotive OEMs remain a long-term growth engine for Arbe, and we will still compete to be designed into Western OEMs’ transfer suit. However, our strategy today broaden our scope and reduces our dependence on their extended timeline. As part of this strategic change, we announce today a planned leadership transition to support Arbe’s next phase of execution. Ram Machness, who has served as Arbe’s Chief Business Officer over the past eight years and led our strategy, sales, product, and support functions, will assume the role of CEO as of April 1st, 2026.

At the same time, I will remain fully and actively involved in the company in my new role as President of Arbe. Ram has the full confidence of our board of directors and me, bringing 30 years of experience across embedded systems, semiconductors, and the automotive industry, including 12 years in senior leadership roles at Texas Instruments. He brings a strong execution mindset, deep product and customer understanding, and proven experience scaling complex technologies from development into production and into commercialization. With Ram leading day-to-day execution as CEO, I will focus on our long-term strategy, advance new initiatives, specifically in the defense market, develop key partnerships, and guide strategic investments to help accelerate what I see as the new phase of sustainable long-term growth. I will hand over the call to Ram to say a few words.

Ram Machness, Chief Business Officer (transitioning to CEO), Arbe Robotics: Thank you, Kobi. I deeply appreciate the trust and confidence that the board and our cofounders, Kobi Marenko and Noam Arkind, had placed in me. I would like to thank Kobi for leading Arbe from its inception and for building the strong foundation that has now enabled us to transition into serial production and move towards full commercialization. I’m excited about the opportunities ahead, and I’m committed to leveraging our strong product. I look forward to guiding Arbe for its next phase of growth and success. Back to you, Kobi.

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: Thank you, Ran. Turning to recent highlights, during 2025, we made solid progress. First, on the automotive front, we announced a new serial production design win with a state-owned OEM in China. HiRain Technologies LRR610 radar, powered by our ultra-high definition radar chipset, was selected for a level four autonomous vehicle program. Production vehicles are expected to reach the market starting in 2027. We see meaningful long-term potential. Second, in line with our strategy to expand beyond automotive, defense and homeland security continue to gain traction. Our Tier 1 Sensrad has placed chipset orders for Forterra’s autonomous vehicle program for the U.S. Department of Defense. Forterra equips the next generation of defense unmanned ground vehicles, shaping operations in demanding environments.

Sensrad ultra-definition imaging radar, powered by the Arbe chipset, has been integrated into the Forterra AutoDrive perception suite to improve environmental awareness, obstacle detection, and navigation in unstructured and GPS-denied conditions. In parallel, we are integrating our chipset into a leading homeland security supplier radar systems to deliver joint system-level solutions for defense forces, law enforcement, perimeter security, and other homeland security applications. These collaborations significantly expand our best presence in mission-critical defense markets. Third, we are seeing momentum in robotaxi applications, supporting multiple robotaxi projects already across several countries. While the addressable market is smaller than that of passenger vehicles, we see strong long-term potential. Fourth, in the marine safety space, Sensrad recently secured a large follow-up order from WATCHIT for marine collision preventing system, powered by our chipset.

The technology powers WATCHIT Eye, a commercially available system already selected by the Azimut Benetti Group, a leading builder of luxury yachts. Fifth, we are seeing traction in smart infrastructure applications. Sensrad delivered follow-on orders for all the 4D imaging radars to its customers, Tianyi Transportation Technology in China in December 2025. Additional smart infrastructure projects using Arbe-based radars are underway. We continue to work closely with NVIDIA to integrate our ultra-high-resolution radars into their DRIVE Hyperion platform, combining our highly detailed sensing with their advanced AI compute to support production-ready vehicle autonomy. Finally, our technology leadership was recognized with two industry awards in 2025, including the Just Auto Excellence Award and the AutoTech Breakthrough Award. Looking ahead for 2026, our focus on markets with shorter adoption cycles is expected to begin contributing to revenue this year.

I know that we remain engaged with global automotive OEMs, and while we expect to continue securing additional design wins over time, similar to our recent OEM wins in China, we are no longer providing guidance on their timing. In summary, we believe we are well positioned for the years ahead. We are diversifying our potential revenue base, having broadened our focus beyond passenger vehicle OEM programs and expanded into defense and other non-automotive verticals. We start 2026 with a much strengthened balance sheet and lower expenses footprint and improved efficiency, which will extend our financial runway. In a few weeks, at the beginning of the second quarter, I will be handing over the CEO reins to a strong pair of hands from a position of strength. Looking ahead, I believe that Arbe is increasingly well positioned for long-term and sustainable growth.

I would like to turn the call over to our CFO, Karine, to go over the dimensions.

Karine Pinto-Flomenboim, Chief Financial Officer, Arbe Robotics: Thank you, Kobi. Hello, everyone. Let me review our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025 in more detail. Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025 totaled $0.5 million compared to $0.1 million in Q4 2024. For the full year of 2025, total revenue was $1 million compared to $0.8 million in 2024. Backlog as of today stands at $1.3 million. Gross profit for Q4 2025 was negative $0.1 million, compared to a negative $0.2 million in the same period last year. Gross annual profit for 2025 was at the same level as 2024, a negative $0.8 million. Turning to operating expenses. Total operating expenses for Q4 2025 were $11.5 million before.

Operating expenses for the full year of 2025 totaled $47.1 million compared to $48.9 million in 2024. Operating expenses decreased year-over-year, primarily driven by lower share-based compensation. This reflects earlier equity grants that have now fully vested, as well as our most recent award being structured approximately half in cash and half in equity, resulting in lower equity expenses for this year. This decrease was partially offset by unfavorable foreign exchange impact and, to a lesser extent, merit-based salary increases. As a result, Operating loss for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $11.6 million, down from $12.8 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Operating loss for the full year of 2025 was $47.9 million, compared to a loss of $49.6 million in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measurement, which excludes expenses for non-cash share-based compensation and for non-recurring items, was a loss of $9.7 million in Q4 of 2025, compared to a loss of $9 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year of 2025 amounted to a loss of $37.6 million, resulting from the cash grant award and from the unfavorable foreign exchange impact, compared to 2024 adjusted EBITDA loss of $33.3 million. We believe that this non-GAAP measurement is important in management’s evaluation of our use of cash and planning and evaluating our cash requirements for the coming period.

Net loss in the fourth quarter of 2025 was $10.2 million, compared to a net loss of $12.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Net loss for the full year of 2025 was $45.2 million, compared to a loss of $49.3 million in 2024. Net loss in 2025 included financial income of $2.8 million, compared to a financial income of $0.3 million in 2024. Full year 2025 financial income included interest earned on deposits and gains from call option, as well as impact of changes in the warrant liability for warrants not classified as equity and the revaluation of lease liabilities. These were partially offset by foreign exchange revaluation, losses, and to a lesser extent, issuance cost.

Moving to our balance sheet. As of December 31st, 2025, Arbe held $45 million in cash and cash equivalent and short-term bank deposits. During January 2026, we raised gross proceeds of $18.5 million in an underwritten public offering, thus providing a robust balance sheet, enabling an extended financial runway to fully support our next phase of execution. With respect to our guidance, to broaden our commercial business potential, we decided to expand our strategic focus beyond the Western Automotive OEM programs to opportunities we believe have shorter adoption cycle and more immediate commercial potential, including defense, robotaxi, robot trucks, and off-road markets. Our expanded strategy is intended to accelerate revenue generation while maintaining engagements with global automotive OEMs as part of the company’s long-term vision.

Based on current market condition and customer engagements, visibly, the company provides the following outlook for 2026 is projected to be a loss in the range of $28 million-$31 million, reflecting the company’s strengthened balance sheet and cost reduction measures taken. This outlook reflects management’s current expectation as of today and is subjected to change based on market conditions, customer adoption timelines, and other factors. Arbe expects to continue signing additional automotive OEM design wins over time beyond the recently announced design wins. The timing of future wins remains dependent on OEM adoption cycles, which are taking longer than previously anticipated. The company is not providing guidance on the timing of additional automotive OEM design wins. We will be happy to open the call for your questions. Operator?

Operator: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please press the star, followed by the 1 on your touchtone phone. If you wish to decline from the polling process, please press the star key followed by a 2. Your questions will be polled in the order they are received. The first question comes from George Gianarikas of Canaccord Genuity. Go ahead, please.

George Gianarikas, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions and welcome, Ram. Congratulations.

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: Thank you.

George Gianarikas, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Maybe to start first on defense applications that appear to be gaining momentum, can you help us in the patient that you’re seeing in that market and whether or not it’s, you know, what kind of traction you’re seeing per vehicle so far? Thank you.

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: You mean, on the non-automotive or you mean robotaxi?

George Gianarikas, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Just first, purely on defense applications. Like, is there a different structure to applications that means that they need more than one chip? Thank you.

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: In the defense application, there is a few verticals that we are targeting. First of all, there is Forterra, which is basically it’s very close to regular automotive because it’s autonomous driving, it’s off-road, it’s military, it’s the U.S. Army, but it’s basically very close to that. Which means that it’s a 1 radar per vehicle, the same opportunity. Remember that because of the low volume, the price of this chip set is much higher than automotive, and our gross margins are much better. The second vertical is the perimeter defense and drones detection. For that, we need to provide a 360-degree solution, which means it’s basically 4 radars per unit.

Again, since the volumes are, and the prices are prices of homeland security and defense, the gross margin is gonna be much better than regular automotive. Same I would say in robotaxis. The low volume represent much better gross margins. Of course, if you compare it to millions of units per year, this is not the same, but since anyway, the level three assumptions were that the ramp up of revenues will be very low, we believe that in 2027 we will be able to reach revenues that from level three, maybe will be there in 2031 or 2032.

George Gianarikas, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Maybe just to focus a little bit on robotaxi. Are the opportunities that you’re seeing in the market with Chinese traditional and non-traditional OEMs, or is it more Western non-traditional and traditional OEMs?

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: With the robotaxi players that are not OEMs, we don’t see another OEMs. We know those players, you know, from Waymo to Nuro to Cruise, all of those, we believe, gonna be the leaders in this market. I don’t think it’s a market of OEMs.

George Gianarikas, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Right. Are the, is the interest you’re seeing with OEMs that are non-Chinese in the robotaxi market?

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: Not really. I think the Western OEMs, except of course, Tesla, lost their appetite for robotaxi.

George Gianarikas, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Understood. Maybe I just wanna clarify what you said about the robotaxi revenue potential. Is that something that you see maybe ramping from a revenue perspective in 2027, or did you say later this decade?

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: The robotaxi, we gonna see revenues already in 2026, and we’re gonna see ramp up in, we believe in, 2026, it’s 2027, 2028.

George Gianarikas, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Maybe last question from me with regard to the robo trucking, the autonomous trucking opportunity. How should we think about that and the potential for wins there and revenue ramp? Thank you.

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: Yeah, it’s the same. Where we have, we already announced the truck customer. Yes, we believe that the when we are saying to robotaxi, we take the robot trucks as well.

George Gianarikas, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Understood. Thank you very much.

Operator: The next question comes from Suji Desilva of ROTH Capital. Go ahead, please.

Suji Desilva, Analyst, ROTH Capital: Hi, Kobi and Karine, and Ram, best of luck in the new role. You talked about the non-auto opportunity. Can you talk about the sales cycle there and how much shorter it is versus passenger auto, and how long you’ve been pursuing that market? Sounds like you already have some traction there.

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: First, thank you for joining us, even from London. We began this shift around end of Q3 last year, when we saw that the delays in the level three and the volumes, in the, and the appetite of the OEM is getting a bit lower than expected. Well, at least a meaningful order. In the midterm, there is of course, order for 1 to 10 to 20 units for evaluation, and then, from six months, we can get a meaningful order, which is hundreds or even more than that of units.

Suji Desilva, Analyst, ROTH Capital: Okay. It sounds like on this call, Kobi, that you’re formalizing this effort or at least communicating it was formally. What steps will you take internally to deploy kind of, as, people internally to target these non-passenger auto opportunities?

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: First of all, we have dedicated sales operations for that. You’re gonna see our marketing, all efforts and the conferences that we are taking this year, they are all shifted to include also non-automotive. Also from the inside organization, we, of course, did what is needed in terms of in order to support it, because the support here is much more complicated. Every customer has his own demands and his own variations. We are incorporating here also with Sensrad, and there is some customers that we need to support directly. All of that is things that we are doing.

Suji Desilva, Analyst, ROTH Capital: Great. Then last question, Kobi. Can you talk about the difference perhaps in the competitive landscape of this non-passenger auto market, or is it similar to the auto market? Any color there would be helpful. Thanks.

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: It’s different between, let’s say, robot taxi and the robot truck, where we basically, I think, meeting with the same competitors as in automotive. In the other verticals like defense and like marine and so on. On the defense side, there is not a solution right now in 77 gigahertz that is competing with us, that can really support what we are offering. There is a 24 gigahertz radar, Echodyne and MatrixSpace are players in this market. We believe that first of all, there is a large demand right now. There is room for everyone, and there is a lot of advantage for the 77 gigahertz coming from the price and also the weather.

24 gigahertz is a spectrum that has problems in the humidity and rain. It’s not as resilient as 77, and in those applications, of course, it’s critical.

Suji Desilva, Analyst, ROTH Capital: Okay, thanks, Kobi. Thanks, everyone.

Operator: The next question comes from Casey Ryan of WestPark Capital. Go ahead, please.

Casey Ryan, Analyst, WestPark Capital: Thank you. Good morning. This is exciting update. Can I ask you a quick few modeling questions? The $4 million-$6 million in guidance sounds like that’s going to be all non-automotive is sort of the expectation today, or is there some automotive built into that $4 million-$6 million revenue guide?

Karine Pinto-Flomenboim, Chief Financial Officer, Arbe Robotics: We’ve mentioned it’s mainly non-auto.

Casey Ryan, Analyst, WestPark Capital: Mm-hmm.

Karine Pinto-Flomenboim, Chief Financial Officer, Arbe Robotics: We did mention. HiRain, which is also

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: Which is also.

Karine Pinto-Flomenboim, Chief Financial Officer, Arbe Robotics: Which is also.

Casey Ryan, Analyst, WestPark Capital: Okay. That’s helpful. Then, just quickly on the OpEx numbers, do you believe Q4 numbers will be consistent roughly across 2026, or do you think that number will come down further? What are your thoughts just about direction, not giving out specific numbers?

Karine Pinto-Flomenboim, Chief Financial Officer, Arbe Robotics: Sure. As we mentioned, we did do restructuring in order for the company to continue its runway. I assume that the adjusted EBITDA that we guided reflects this new course of expenses. It will go down slightly.

Casey Ryan, Analyst, WestPark Capital: Okay.

Karine Pinto-Flomenboim, Chief Financial Officer, Arbe Robotics: In order to enable us.

Casey Ryan, Analyst, WestPark Capital: Okay. Yeah, great. Those two points are helpful. Then sort of broadly, defense is a very exciting sector, and so are smart cities and all these sort of, physical AI end markets. Is your product a candidate for things that are retrofits instead of new builds? Saying maybe existing military vehicles being equipped with autonomy or upgraded in some fashion to sort of consume advanced technologies like your chipset.

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: Sure. It’s like the robotaxi and like the robotruck. Basically, the platform itself, can get the radar in a later stage, so it’s aftermarket like, so of course, we can support retrofit as well.

Casey Ryan, Analyst, WestPark Capital: Okay. That’s actually very exciting.

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: Now we need a big RFP for a retrofit of almost vehicle that is already deployed in thousands of units.

Casey Ryan, Analyst, WestPark Capital: Right. Do you think that there’s interest in movement in sort of doing retrofits?

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: Yeah, sure. Sure, there is new, our ability to provide drone detection in tactical pulses is really appreciated by the customers. This is all a retrofit.

Casey Ryan, Analyst, WestPark Capital: Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, that’s actually pretty exciting because that is faster to market as well, but also, fairly large, right? Upgrading all the existing could be a pretty exciting opportunity. Just last question around defense. Are other defense forces candidates for you as well, with your customers who could presumably build product for, you know, Western European forces as well, beyond the U.S.?

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: Yeah, sure. Beyond US and Israeli, of course, we are looking also into Western Europe, armies as well.

Casey Ryan, Analyst, WestPark Capital: Okay. Okay, sort of the last question, to slow down a little bit in automotive. Is there any connection to sort of the pacing of, say, EVs versus ICE in terms of the powertrain, you know, thoughts around OEMs? Or are there other factors at play around moving to L3 and L4, and those types of things?

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: I think, it’s connected and not connected. Of course, the fact that, the OEMs invested a lot in EV, and the EV basically, is there slowing down, this has caused the OEMs for a huge write-off in tens of billions of dollars. Of course, this is, forces them, to reduce, the headcount and to cut, expenses, and this is all delaying their R&D for, the level three.

Casey Ryan, Analyst, WestPark Capital: I see.

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: it’s not because the fact that the EV is not there, it’s because of the fact that the EV caused them major losses.

Casey Ryan, Analyst, WestPark Capital: Got it. That’s actually very helpful and makes a lot of sense. Well, sort of beyond that sort of short-term slowdown, it feels like a pretty exciting outlook for 2026 with new markets and then, you know, hopefully progress in automotive as we hit the 2027. That’s it for me. Thank you for those answers and discussion points.

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: Thank you.

Operator: If there are any additional questions, please press the star key followed by the 1 on your touchtone phone. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the star key followed by a 2. There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Marenko, would you like to make your concluding statement?

Kobi Marenko, Co-founder and CEO (transitioning to President), Arbe Robotics: Yeah. On behalf of the management shareholders for your continued interest and long-term support of our business. Before I leave, I want to say that I have totally enjoyed serving as Arbe’s CEO, and I am proud of our achievements. Over the years, we have built a strong technology foundation, achieved important milestones, and positioned the company for its next phase to ramp in the near future. I have full confidence in Ram’s leadership and look forward to working closely with him as President of Arbe, as we continue to execute on Arbe’s strategy and build long-term value. With that, we will end our call. Have a good day.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.