Al Root

Shares of lidar maker Luminar Technologies jumped after the company reported stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter sales and gross profits.

Thursday evening, the company announced fourth-quarter sales of $22.5 million, up from $22.1 million a year ago. Wall Street was looking for $17.7 million.

Adjusted gross profit came in at $14 million. Wall Street was looking for a loss of about $12 million.

Luminar shares were up 6.7% in after-hours trading at $6.70. Shares fell 13.3% in regular trading ahead of earnings, while the S&P 500 dropped 0.2% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was flat.

Through Thursday trading, shares were down 77% over the past 12 months. Falling sales estimates have weighed on investor sentiment. A year ago, Wall Street expected 2024 sales of about $115 million. Luminar reported roughly $75 million.

"This past year represents a culmination of a decade's worth of work with the launch of the Volvo EX90 -- the first global production vehicle with leading technologies like Luminar and Nvidia," said Luminar CEO Austin Russell in a news release. "We delivered a strong finish to 2024, achieving our key business milestones and outperforming our financial expectations in Q4."

Auto makers -- such as Volvo -- are adopting lidar, which is essentially, laser-based radar, to serve as a set of eyes for a car that helps enable better safety features and autonomous driving.

For 2025, Luminar expects sales growth of 10% to 20%. That implies total revenue of about $87 million, below Wall Street's estimate of $109 million.

For now, investors are happy with growth despite the lower-than-expected amount.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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March 20, 2025 17:17 ET (21:17 GMT)

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