From the financial report, looking at Hesai in 2024: Strong performance in annual profitability, will the robotics business create another Hesai?

In the secondary market, it is not uncommon for stock prices to lead fundamentals and reflect optimistic or pessimistic expectations of listed companies in advance. Take the lidar industry, which is regarded by many institutions as having the strongest β in the advanced intelligent driving field. The star company Hesai (HSAI.US) has recently been favored by capital over the past four months. The company's stock price "soared" several times from $4.5 at the beginning of November last year, and at one point broke $20 in late February, showing a strong performance.

Zhitong Finance believes that the underlying logic of Hesai's stock price revaluation may lie in the market's "forward pricing," where some smart capital anticipates that the company is accelerating into the performance realization period, thus actively pricing the company's growth in advance with real money.

In early March, Hesai disclosed its Q4 and full-year performance for 2024 after the market closed on March 10, Eastern Time. According to the financial report, Hesai's revenue continued to grow at a double-digit rate in 2024, and it successfully achieved the important milestone of profitability for the entire year, making it the first and only listed lidar company globally to achieve full-year profitability.

Beyond the strong data, Hesai's financial report also "hides" many value "undercurrents." For example, during Q4, Hesai secured exclusive orders from top European automakers, which set a record for the scale of the company's overseas original equipment manufacturing lidar. Additionally, Hesai's ATX products are expected to enter mass production this year; at the same time, the company's new production line will be put into operation in the third quarter, further elevating Hesai's production capacity. Furthermore, Hesai's mini ultra-semi-spherical 3D lidar JT series has also begun mass production and delivery earlier this year, indicating that Hesai's "robotic eye" related products have great potential in the imaginative field of robotics.

Accelerated Arrival of a Positive Business Growth Cycle

For growth stocks, financial reports are undoubtedly the most suitable "touchstone" for testing growth potential. From Hesai's latest disclosed financial report, it is clear that the growth demonstrated by the company fully matches the upward trend of its stock price over the past few months.

Data shows that during Q4 last year, the company's revenue increased by 28.3% year-on-year to 720 million yuan, with a quarter-on-quarter increase of as much as 33.3%. From a full-year perspective, Hesai achieved revenue of 2.08 billion yuan in 2024, with a year-on-year growth rate of 10.7%; Non-GAAP net profit was 14 million yuan, successfully turning a profit, making it the only listed lidar company globally to achieve full-year profitability so far.

Moreover, in 2024, Hesai's operating cash flow further optimized to 63 million yuan, significantly improving from the previous year; at the same time, net cash flow expanded to 1.3 billion yuan, demonstrating a blood-generating capacity and financial sustainability far exceeding the industry average, which will naturally be viewed as a plus by discerning investors in the secondary marketHesai's performance can lead the industry in a leapfrogging manner, closely related to the company's strong push for cost reduction based on achieving performance breakthroughs in its technological roadmap.

Take the company's representative product, the ATX, as an example. This platform-based lidar, developed on Hesai's fourth-generation chip architecture, achieves a perfect combination of compact size and powerful performance through optimized optical and mechanical design, providing longer detection distances, higher resolution, and a broader field of view, endowing smart vehicles with strong three-dimensional perception capabilities.

With its high quality and performance characteristics, the ATX has secured multiple model collaborations with 11 leading domestic automakers, including BYD, Chery, Great Wall, Changan, and Voyah, and has been planned by many OEM clients as a standard configuration for mass production models in 2025. Notably, under the expectation of achieving large-scale shipments, the price of the ATX is also expected to drop to $200 this year, a 50% reduction compared to the previous generation. Thanks to this, the ATX has even begun to penetrate models priced around 100,000 yuan, making "smart driving equality" a reality.

The simultaneous deepening of technological breakthroughs and cost reductions naturally reflects in the market as continued strong product delivery: during Q4, Hesai's ADAS product delivery volume reached 193,241 units, a year-on-year increase of 140.3%; the total ADAS lidar delivery volume for the year was 456,386 units, a year-on-year increase of 134.2%.

At the same time that it continues to lead the in-vehicle market, Hesai is also proactively exploring opportunities in the robotics market. In Q4, Hesai's product delivery volume in the robotics field was 28,813 units. In December alone, the delivery of lidar exceeded 20,000 units, indicating a significant upward trend.

Thanks to the joint advancement of the "smart driving eye" and "robotics eye," Hesai's total lidar delivery volume for the year exceeded 500,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 126%, marking the company's fourth consecutive year of doubling its delivery volume.

From the financial data, it can be asserted that Hesai has accelerated into a positive growth cycle of "scale development - cost reduction and efficiency improvement to achieve profitability - further scale expansion."

Going All Out to Recreate a New Hesai?

Having been listed on the US stock market for over two years, what achievements Hesai can achieve by 2025 may be of great interest to secondary market investors.

First, looking at the in-vehicle business, which still dominates growth at this stage, Hesai made a significant breakthrough in the international market in Q4, reaching a multi-year exclusive collaboration with a top European automaker that spans beyond 2030, covering multiple models of both fuel and new energy vehicles. This is also the largest pre-installed mass production lidar order that Hesai has secured overseas to date.

It is evident that as Hesai's products become standard configurations for more and more leading global automakers, the company's smart driving "circle of friends" is also expanding. As of the time of writing, Hesai has reached mass production collaboration agreements with 120 models from 22 domestic and international automotive manufacturersFollowing this positive trend, it is foreseeable that Hesai's growth certainty and resilience will further improve.

Based on this, it can be said that Hesai's recent surge in stock price is merely a "rehearsal." Even if it has multiplied several times in a short period, as the company's performance continues to fulfill expectations of positive cyclical growth, Hesai's outstanding growth potential will inevitably attract more capital.

In terms of future highlights, in the vehicle-mounted business, taking Hesai's latest AT1440 as an example, this product features 1,440 transceiver channels and an angular resolution of 0.02°, which is technically far ahead of the industry. With the acceleration of the commercialization process for L3-level intelligent driving, Hesai's high-performance LiDAR will naturally have significant applications. While maintaining technological leadership, thanks to the "dividends" released by scaled development, Hesai's product price advantage is also significant, which explains why Hesai can currently lead the entire industry across multiple dimensions.

In 2025, Hesai's new production line will officially commence production in the third quarter. It is expected that by the end of this year, the company's annualized production capacity will rise to 2 million units, at which point the "evolved" Hesai will have a greater capacity to supply high-quality products to the market.

Beyond the vehicle-mounted business, the broad application prospects of Hesai's products in the robotics market are also noteworthy.

As mentioned at the beginning, in January, Hesai officially launched the JT series products aimed at the robotics field, which have now entered mass production and delivery. It is understood that this year alone, the JT series will deliver a six-figure order for the MOVA intelligent lawnmower. Additionally, this series has also received orders from Agtonomy, a partner for unmanned agricultural vehicle solutions for the world's largest light construction equipment manufacturer.

Moreover, it is worth mentioning that Hesai's XT series is also providing 3D perception technology for Yushu Technology, one of the rising stars known as the "Six Little Dragons of Hangzhou."

According to company sources, Hesai expects its total shipments for the year to reach 1.2 to 1.5 million units, with laser radar for the robotics field expected to ship 200,000 units; reflecting in financial data, the company's net revenue for the year is projected to reach 3 to 3.5 billion yuan, with GAAP profits reaching 200 to 350 million yuan, and Non-GAAP profits expected to expand to 350 million to 500 million yuan.

With such strong expectations for performance growth, it is reasonable to see the company's stock price continuously rallying upward recently. Essentially, the underlying logic of capital "rushing ahead" is a game around the company's "expectation gap." Based on the strong development potential of future business, it can be anticipated that Hesai's stock price will rebound and challenge new highs after a brief consolidation. Following the release of the latest "report card," investors may need to carefully examine Hesai's long-term allocation opportunities with the investment logic of high-quality growth stocks