OLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q4 2017. Revenues increased 40% from Q4 2016 and reached $6.4 million. Operating loss was $1.6 million (down from $3.8 million in Q4 2016) and net loss decreased to $0.9 million.
For the full year 2017, eMagin reported revenues of $22 million (up 3% from 2016) and a net loss of $7.8 million. As of the end of the year, eMagin had $3.5 million in cash and equivalents, but the company raised $10.6 million since (not, it seems, from Apple, Valve and LG).
Going forward, eMagin is quite positive regarding its military and industrial markets - and also regarding the consumer VR/AR market. The company is experiencing a rebound in the military business and is "well positioned for 2018", and even expects to breakeven during the year.
During the company's conference call, CEO Andrew Sculley gave his views on Micro-LED technologies. eMagin actually did a research in this area with a University and has some patents towards micro-LED based microdisplays. However according to Andrew this technology still faces some challenges and it may take several years before Micro-LEDs could be applied to microdisplays (unlike TVs or larger displays which are already on the market).
Disclosure: the author of this post holds some shares in eMagin
From 4Q 2017 CC :
Andrew Sculley
Now on the bigger display side, we've actually done a design that's different than what we do today, and therefore, the yield will be better because of the different design, and that's one of the reasons we mentioned this chip manufacturer, helping with sourcing. We're also working on sourcing to make sure the cost of this new design gets to where it needs to be.
Large area oled microdisplay and method of manufacturing same
Patent # 9899456
Publication Date - 2/20/18
"The present invention provides unique designs and methods for achieving such large, seamless, tiled panels for full color, high-resolution large area displays. In particular, these large area displays measure approximately 1 to 3 inches per side and are ideal for, amongst other things, high-resolution displays in demand for virtual reality device (e.g. headsets). "