Universal Display participated in Cowen and Company's 42nd Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference. This was a very interested talk - and I recommend listening to it if you're an investor (or interested in investing) in UDC. Here I give some of the updates and highlights from that talk.
In Q1 2014, UDC Introduced a new high performing red emitters for mobile applications. That red emitter is longer lasting, provide a better gamut and is also more efficient. UDC more or less confirmed that the GS5 uses these new materials and that's how Samsung managed to improve the efficiency by 25% compared to the GS4 display. Because these are new materials, SDC go back to the original prices (before accumulative volume discounts).
UDC now sells materials to 25 different companies - all display companies, and a number of
lighting companies. In another interesting comment, UDC says that Samsung's yields for mobile phone displays are now over 90%. And the high-end OLEDs now cost less than comparable high end LCD displays (retina displays).
Regarding patents, the new green emitters (used in the GS4) are based on new patents that expire in 2029. UDC says that any commercial material they sell is covered by at least 4 patents (just on the material itself) - and these run out till 2020. UDC's new emitters mentioned before already use some of the IP bought from Fuji a while back, by the way, so this deal is starting to pay off.
Regarding the company's encapsulation technology (UniversalBarrier) - UDC says that this technology is equivalent to Vitex's 6-layer encapsulation - but in a single layer. The company is still looking for ways to scale this up, and they are looking for partners to help build the required equipment.
If you want to learn more about UDC, check out our recent interview with the company's director of communications and investor relations.
Disclosure: the author of this post holds some shares in Universal Display
