Financial - Page 20

LG Display reported its financial results for Q2 2020 - with revenues up 12% over last quarter, as the company enjoyed an increase in demand for IT panels (monitors, notebooks, tablets). But lower demand for TVs and lower utilization at its POLED fabs increased LGD's operating loss.

LG Display says it expects its Q3 revenues and operation profit to improve - as mass production of OLED TV panels in Guangzhou finally started, and the company will ship pOLED panels to Apple's iPhone 12 in the next quarter. LG maintains its 4.5-5 million OLED TV panel shipment forecast for the whole of 2020.

Last month OLED microdisplay maker eMagin announced that the company received a $5.5 million award from the US Department of Defense to improve eMagin’s OLED microdisplay manufacturing capabilities - which was a first phase in a three phase program.

The DoD yesterday published the full project, a Defense Production Act Title III agreement with eMagin that has a total funding of $33.6 million (this excludes the $5.5 million announced before). The DoD wants eMagin to sustain and expand its critical industrial base production of OLED microdisplays. This project is part of the US national response to COVID-19.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin posted its preliminary revenues for the second quarter of 2020 and backlog at June 30, 2020. eMagin estimates that revenues in Q2 2020 will be between $7.4 million to $7.7 million, a 38-44% increase from Q2 2019 and 10-15% increase from Q1 2020.

eMagin says that it has seen improvement in demand from both its military business and its consumer or commercial programs. The company's backlog as of June 30 was $14.8 million.

Japan Display says it is developing a new OLED production technology that will enable higher resolution and higher efficiency OLED displays, and the company is in talks with potential customers regarding a joint investment in producing next-generation OLEDs.

According to JDI's CEO, the company is using a new manufacturing technology that is different to the evaporation method currently used by OLED makers. It is not clear what is meant by that - it could be an inkjet-printing technology (but achieving high resolution for smartphone displays with inkjet printing is a challenge) or something like OVPD or OVJP - or a new technology developed in-house at JDI.

It came to our attention that a couple of months ago, Taiwan-based INT Tech signed an agreement to establish an OLED display fab in the city of Taizhou in Zhejiang province, China. The total investment in the project will be 1 billion Yuan (around $143 million USD) and the local government will support the project.

INT Tech developed a proprietary glass-based high pixel density OLED technology - which enables ultra high-resolution displays on glass TFT backplanes. The company is aiming to produce lower-cost and higher-performance microdisplays for the AR/XR markets.

DSCC estimates that Apple paid around $950 million to Samsung Display in the last quarter - due to lower smartphone OLED orders. Apple is committed to buy a certain amount of displays, and this payment is a fine due to lower orders.

A year ago in July 2019, Apple paid $684 million - again as compensation for lower-than-agreen-on iPhone OLED panel orders.

Amber Molecular announced that it has completed its Series A funding round, raising $5 million USD, led by Phoenix Venture Partners.

Amber Molecular was established in 2017 by researchers at The University of Toronto in Canada to develop novel fluorescent OLED emitters. Amber Molecular's patented family of fluorescent OLED emissive materials produce photons in the orange, red and infrared spectrum, targeting new OLED applications.

JOLED announced that it has filed lawsuits in the US and Germany against Samsung Electronics and Samsung Display. JOLED says that Samsung infringed on its OLED patents without a license.

JOLED (Japan OLED) was established in August 2014 by Japan Display, Sony and Panasonic to produce OLED displays using inkjet printing technology. The company has (or applied for) around 4,000 global OLED patents. We do know which patents JOLED refers to in its new law suit.

JOLED announced that TCL CSoT has invested 20 billion Yen (around $187 million USD) in the company, and has also signed an agreement to jointly develop OLED TV printing technologies.

This is a very interesting development. TCL has been a long time believer in inkjet printing for OLED displays, and the company has established Juhua Printing in 2016 (together with TianMa and other collaborators) as an "open-innovation platform" to develop ink-jet printing of OLED panels. JOLED was not involved as far as we know in this alliance - so has TCL given up on Juhua and is now aiming to rely on JOLED's technology?

Germany-based OLED lighting developer Inuru announced that it has completed its Series-A funding round. Inuru raised €2.3 Million, led by Warsaw based venture capital fund ARIA.

Inuru aims to use the funds to accelerate the production of affordable active packaging and labeling products. Inuru uses flexible OLED lighting devices to develop "luminous label and packaging solutions".