What Happened to the Luminar Stock Price Today?
- Shares of self-driving technology company Luminar (NASDAQ:LAZR) soared more than 10% on Wednesday, marking LAZR stock’s biggest rally in months.
- The rally in Luminar’s stock ends what has been a multi-week downtrend in LAZR shares.
Why LAZR Stock Is Soaring
- Luminar poached a key executive from Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA).
- Tesla’s longstanding vice president of legal and acting general counsel, Al Prescott, is leaving Tesla to join Luminar as its Chief Legal Officer.
- In a statement to CNBC, Prescott said the following:
“Luminar has pioneered safety-critical technology that will power our autonomous future. As someone who’s dedicated my career to automotive safety and innovation, I’m looking forward to helping drive Luminar to the next level and fulfill the mission to make transportation safer for everyone.”
Does It Matter?
- Yes, this is a big deal for LAZR stock holders.
- Elon Musk has long ridiculed Luminar’s core technology — laser sensors called LiDAR — as useless components that will be made obsolete by the computer vision from cameras.
- Most engineers in the autonomous vehicle world disagree with him, instead believing that computer vision will be never perfect, and therefore, will always need help from additional sensors, like LiDAR and RADAR.
- We agree with this sentiment. The AV hardware stack of the future will include multiple sensors. LiDAR will be one of those sensors.
- Tesla’s top legal person also clearly agrees with this sentiment.
- This is a big win for Luminar, and shows that more and more people firmly believe in the future of LiDAR in the AV space.
LAZR Stock Price Forecast
- When it comes to LiDAR sensors, Luminar is the best-in-class.
- The company has developed the highest-performance independent long-range LiDAR in the industry, and also figured out how to manufacture and implement those LiDAR sensors into vehicles at industry-low costs.
- By 2030, we believe that LiDAR sensors will be ubiquitous in the auto industry. We also believe Luminar will control the lion’s share of that market, meaning that Luminar’s LiDAR sensor will be commonplace on cars by the end of the decade.
- Given this huge long-term potential, LAZR stock is presently undervalued. Our modeling suggests shares are worth around $50 today.
Luminar stock represents one of the market’s best plays on the coming Self-Driving Revolution.
But it’s far from the only play on this enormous megatrend. Self-driving cars will be everywhere by 2030. Not fully self-driving cars. That’s still decades away. But partially self-driving cars that can mostly drive themselves with some level of human oversight. Every new car will have that capability by the end of the decade.
Of course, this represents a huge paradigm shift in the multi-trillion-dollar auto industry. Luminar won’t be on the only company that wins big amid this trillion-dollar shift. There are other LiDAR makers, some thermal camera makers, and some planning software companies that will also win big amid this Self Driving Revolution.
To get the names, ticker symbols, and key business details of the best self-driving stocks today, click here.
On the date of publication, Luke Lango did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.
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