Stone Fox Capital
Founder, CIO & Portfolio Manager of Stone Fox Capital
Ouster has won a counter-drone deal. Per @itschrisray, German firm ARGUS Interception will use Ouster's digital lidar to optimize near-range targeting on its A1 Falke net-launching interceptor drone and will explore Ouster's new Rev8 color lidar for color sensing and longer-range detection. x.comÂ
Ouster stock should bounce back after a solid quarter with strong progress on its new Rev8 sensor and the Stereolabs camera integration. Revenue rose 50.2% year over year to $49 million, beating estimates by $2.85 million, while product revenue grew 55% annually and 18% sequentially; GAAP EPS of -$0.28 was in line. x.comÂ
Ouster is a long-term hold that should deliver nice gains a year from now, backed by a wave of new deals. They include a 10-year, 100,000-unit-per-year Rev8 lidar supply agreement with Benchmark Electronics, a multi-year autonomous heavy-equipment contract with AIM Intelligent Machines and a drone-platform partnership with Seneca announced Oct 2. Q2 revenue hit $55M, up 56%, on 17,000+ sensors. The weekly chart shows a bull flag retesting support after breaking out of a multi-month base. x.com … Show more
Ouster is the US-made lidar alternative for buyers who cannot use the Chinese leaders, Hesai and RoboSense. Hesai is on the Pentagon's Chinese military company list, so defense and drone programs must route around it, and Seneca's wildfire drones just picked Ouster's Rev8. Trailing revenue is $205M, with the latest quarter up 56%, and 14.4x sales is cheap for that growth, though it burned $82M of free cash flow last year. The open question is whether the lockout spreads into commercial robotics. … Show more
Ouster is not a compelling way to play physical AI because lidar is a very crowded space and its edges over rivals look likely to be competed away quickly. There are countless better stocks to take advantage of the physical AI theme. Ouster looks okay but not worth touching, though not to the point of buying puts. x.com x.comÂ
Ouster's Seneca partnership takes REV8 native-color lidar into wildfire-response drones, broadening its non-automotive market. Its lidar and Stereolabs perception software can be bundled for higher-margin physical-AI sales; gross margin recently reached 48.9%. Quarterly sensor shipments topped 17,000 and revenue hit $55 million, up 56% year over year. Ouster could reach $85. x.comÂ
Ouster's lidar and cameras, which let robots and machines see, are winning steady growth and new deployments. Q2 revenue grew 56% to $55M, its 14th straight quarter of product revenue growth. John Deere's GUSS Automation plans to use its Rev8 lidar, which Ouster calls the first native color lidar, in autonomous orchard machines, and a multimillion-dollar Utah expansion brings its traffic system to nearly 300 intersections and roadway locations. x.comÂ
Ouster and Aeva have each doubled in a year on the story that humanoid robots need LiDAR, but no link in that chain looks able to hold its price once capacity catches up. Omdia puts total humanoid LiDAR demand near 400,000 units by 2030, while Hesai alone is scaling toward 4 million units a year in 2026, and Tesla Optimus and Figure 03 rely on cameras. The two names making real money are Chinese. Ouster's best argument is its Stereolabs hedge if cameras win. x.com x.comÂ
Ouster could plausibly 10x over 10 years if lidar becomes a standard part of physical AI, because far more machines will interact autonomously with the physical world by 2036. Robots, mines, traffic systems, defense systems and eventually autonomous vehicles all need perception. Ouster is already growing quickly with strong gross margins, its OS1 was the first high-resolution 3D lidar approved under the DoD's Blue UAS Framework, and it trades at about $2B EV. A 10x needs a 26% CAGR. x.comÂ
Ouster is a pick-and-shovel play on physical AI, because robots, autonomous systems, smart infrastructure and warehouses cannot automate what they cannot perceive, and lidar is foundational to that. Q2 revenue rose 56% to $55M on a record 17,000+ lidar and camera sensors shipped, with a 49% GAAP gross margin and $263M of cash and investments with no debt. Q3 guidance implies about 42% growth at the midpoint. x.comÂ
Ouster is not a buy at its recent price, because even a great business can be a bad investment if you pay too much. The stock has fallen 20% since that call, and stocks often draw the most attention at the worst time to buy. Physical AI remains a very bullish theme, and adding becomes attractive if the price keeps dropping and risk/reward improves. x.comÂ
Ouster is one of the few US lidar companies with a real moat and pricing power, positioned for physical AI and robotics, which are going to be huge. Below $30 is a level to buy. x.comÂ
