FAST NEWS: TuSimple’s Quarterly Loss Narrows Sharply, Beating Expectations

The latest: Autonomous truck company TuSimple Holdings Inc. (TSP.US) said it recorded a $112 million loss in the first quarter of the year, narrowing by more than half from a $385 million loss a year earlier, according to its latest quarterly report released on Tuesday.

Looking up: The company’s loss per share was $0.50 for the period, which beat the average estimate for a $0.57 loss forecast by six Wall Street analysts, according to Zacks Investment Research.

Take Note: The company reported first-quarter revenue of $2.26 million, up 140% from $944,000 a year ago and up 10% from the previous quarter. But that was still below Wall Street analyst expectations for $3.12 million.

Digging Deeper: Founded in 2015 by Chinese businessman Chen Mo, TuSimple is an autonomous driving company that has chosen to avoid fierce competition in the passenger car market by focusing on heavy trucks, which are easier to commercialize. Earlier this year it claimed to have completed the world’s first fully unmanned test of a heavy truck on the open road, with the goal of bringing the technology into mass production by 2024. Although TuSimple’s roots are in China, the company in March proposed selling its Chinese operations for $1 billion to focus on its North American self-driving truck business. It also reached an agreement with the U.S. national security regulator to store data from its U.S. operations locally, and to limit access for those operations to its Chinese subsidiary to reduce regulatory risk in the U.S.

Market Reaction: TuSimple shares fell by a marginal 0.1% to $10.49 in Tuesday after-hours trade in New York following the report’s release. The company’s shares are down 73.8% from their IPO price of $40 in April 2021.

Translation by Jony Ho

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