Is Ouster Stock the Best Way to Invest in LiDAR?

Managers are expected to make decisions with limited information and do so with conviction. Oftentimes, it’s more important to have an opinion than it is to have the correct answer. MBAs learn this gift of gab by working on case studies where there is no wrong answer. After they graduate, companies pay them to make decisions, sometimes in roles where they aren’t held accountable for outcomes. One good example is estimating the size of total addressable markets (TAMs).

TAM estimates are usually so varied that they’ve largely become useless. One approach to finding the correct answer is by looking for consensus among analysts. For example, here are some data points we pulled together for the size of the global LiDAR opportunity:

• Markets and Markets: $3.4 billion by 2026
• Allied Market Research: $2.9 billion by 2027
• Fortune Business Insights: $6.71 billion by 2026
• Grand View Research: $3.7 billion by 2027
  AVERAGE = 4.17 billion

Let’s address the Indian elephant in the room. Many of these research firms have factories of Mumbai analysts (soon to be Manila analysts) churning these market research reports out as fast as possible. It’s less important to find the right answer than it is to have an answer. Then, you have companies like Luminar (