Financial - Page 17

Ireland-based OLED IP company Solas OLED announced that a jury in the US district court in Texas has found Samsung Display and Samsung Electronics liable to Solas for wilfully infringing two fundamental OLED patents (USPTO #7,446,338 and #9,256,311). The jury awarded solas with $62.7 million in damages.

Solas says that these patents are required for AMOLED to function - these patents were used in the OLED displays used in Samsung's Galaxy S and Galaxy Note smartphones.

China-based OLED maker Visionox has spun-off its PMOLED business, to create a new company called Qingyue. Visionox will now focus on AMOLED production (after having spun-off its OLED lighting unit Yeolight back in 2015).

Qingyue, which is one of the world's leading PMOLED makers, has two 370x400 mm production lines, each with a capacity of 8,000 monthly substrates (around 1.75 million 1 displays).

UK-based OTFT display backplane developer SmartKem has closed a $24.6 million private placement financing. Prior to the financing, the company also completed a reverse acquisition transaction with Parasol Investments Corporation (Parasol), a public Delaware corporation, whereby SmartKem became a wholly owned subsidiary of Parasol which later changed its name to SmartKem and will continue with the company's business as it is.

SmartKem says that the new financing will allow the company to continue and scale and expand the production of its ink material, its electrical design automation tools and its foundry services.

TADF materials developer Kyulux announced that it has finalized its Series-B-prime funding round, raising $34.3 million USD from several VCs and companies. Kyulux will be able to now accelerate its product development and drive for adoption of its materials in smartphone OLED displays.

Kyulux also announced plans to establish a mass production system for its materials, in cooperation with chemical companies.

Universal Display reported its financial results for Q4 2020. Revenues reached a record of $141.5 million, and net income was $54 million. For the whole of 2020, revenues reached $429 million and net income was $133 million.

UDC expects meaningful growth in 2021, and believe revenues will be in the range of $530 to $560 million. The company also announced an increase to its quarterly dividend (to $0.2 per share).

OLED driver IC developer MagnaChip announced its financial results for Q4 2020, with revenues of $142.9 million and 2020 full-year revenues of $507.1 million. The company says its quarterly revenues reached a record high of $80.4 million - a 19% increase from Q3 2020 and a 19.4% increase from Q4 2019.Full-year OLED revenue of $284.6 million increased 6.5% from 2019.

Last year MagnaChip said it has a total of 16 OLED display drivers, almost double the number of drivers it had in its portfolio in Q1 2019. The company has started to develop OLED drivers for automotive products, which the company expects to to into production in the first half of 2021.

Earlier this month we reported that China-based AMOLED producer EverDisplay (EDO) has become a public company. We have been a bit early, but the company is progressing on its IPO registration and has released some more information regarding is business.

The company is raising 10 billion Yuan ($1.5 billion USD) and most of these funds will be used to construct the company's new 6-Gen AMOLED line. As you can see in the image above, almost all the company's OLED panels are used in smartphones and wearables. But in 2020 the company also started to produce laptop and tablet displays - EDO recently started to make 11", 12.8" and 15.6" rigid and foldable AMOLED displays for laptop devices. We list many EDO OLED displays in the OLED Marketplace.

AMOLED producer China-based EverDisplay (EDO) has become a public company and it is now listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange Star Market. The company also released its financial results for the past few years.

The company increased its sales in recent years, rising from 600 million Yuan in 2017 to 800 million in 2018, 1.5 billion in 2019 and 900 million in H1 2020. EDO still suffers from losses, though, and in the first half of 2020 a net loss of 500 million Yuan.

China-based OLED maker Visionox reported good preliminary financial results for 2020, with increased sales and improved revenues and profits. The company expects its net profit to be around 141-210 million Yuan ($21-31 million USD), which will represent an increase of 120-227% over 2019.

The company says that its ability to innovate OLED technologies (specially the world's first OLED with an under-the-screen camera and the world's first 144Hz refresh rate OLED) enabled the company to increase its customer base and in 2020 it has added OPPO and Motorola as customers.

Samsung Electronics reported its Q4 2020 financial results, with revenues of $55 billion and net income of $5.84 billion (less than expected by analysts). The company says that the lower revenues were due to a weakness in the memory and consumer devices businesses, offset by the best quarter ever for Samsung Display.

Samsung expects its OLED business to improve in the next quarter as major customers increase adoption of OLED displays. Looking ahead to 2021, Samsung sees increased demand for OLEDs for high-end and mid-range smartphones. The company aims to diversify into markets such as laptops, tablets and automotive applications.