Luminar Stock Jumps After-Hours On Upbeat Q4 Results: Retail Traders Look Past Soft Revenue Outlook

Shares of Luminar Technologies rose more than 5% in Thursday's extended trading following a tumble in the regular session, aided by encouraging quarterly financial results.

Retail traders also got a good dose of cheer as the automobile technology firm reported a fourth-quarter adjusted net loss of $1.42 per diluted share, improving from a $2.60 loss a year ago and beating expectations of a $1.87 loss.

Revenue rose slightly to $22.5 million from $22.1 million a year earlier and was well above a FactSet estimate of $17.7 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," CEO Austin Russell said in prepared remarks.

On Stocktwits, sentiment turned even more 'extremely bullish' (91/100) by the end of Thursday amid a 266% spike in message volume.

LAZR sentiment and message volume as of March 20. | source: Stocktwits

Investors remained highly optimistic despite Luminar's 2025 revenue forecast of 10% to 20% growth ($82.9 million to $90.5 million), which fell short of the $109.4 million consensus. 

Sentiment was also buoyed by the CEO's remarks on transitioning key customers to Luminar Halo (its next-generation lidar technology), securing new contracts, and the company's expectation for lidar shipments to at least triple this year.

Some users were also relieved that rumors of Luminar losing Mercedes as a customer were put to rest after the CEO named the auto giant as a "key OEM customer" during the earnings call.

Orlando, Florida-based Luminar grabbed headlines this week after a viral YouTube video by a former NASA scientist claimed the company's lidar-based driving technology outperforms Tesla Inc.'s Autopilot.

Luminar stock is up more than 16% year-to-date.

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