Financial - Page 22

In 2019, Doosan Corp spun-off its OLED materials unit, which is now called Doosan Solus (and is listed on the Korean stock market). Doosan Solus produces host materials for OLED displays (in addition to battery foil materials and bio components used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals).

According to reports from Korea, Doosan Corp is looking to raise funds to bail out its troubled Doosan Heavy I&C company, and is looking to sell its 51% stake in Doosan Solus. The reports suggest that Doosan Corp is looking to get 600 billion Won (almost $500 million USD) for its stake, and a possible buyer is private equity fund SkyLake Investment.

Huawei launches its Mate Xs foldable smartphone in February 2020, with a 8" 2200x2480 foldable AMOLED display (produced by BOE). Huawei's consumer business CEO, Yu Chengdong, says taht even though the Mate Xs costs $2,400 the company lost around $60-70 million on this smartphone since its launch.

The Mate Xs is an updated Mate X, with the same display and form factor, but with upgraded specifications.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q4 2019. Revenues were $7.3 million (up 35% from Q4 2018), and the net loss was $0.2 million (down from $2.4 million in Q4 2018).

The company's booking in Q4 2019 were a record for eMagin, exceeding $15 million. The company received 80 orders and it has started a new consumer-related AR development project for a next-generation display for a Tier-1 customer.

OLED-Info has teamed up with Seedrs to offer OLED companies an innovative and effective way to raise capital and grow their businesses, and to offer investors a unique opportunity to invest in promising early stage OLED-related companies. Our sister site Graphene-Info launched a similar graphene crowdfunding service, and we're happy to announce that the first such campaign is now live (and it has already reached 41% of its funding goal, only one day after the campaign launched!).

planarTECH, founded in 2014, supplies CVD equipment for the production of high quality graphene sheets, as well as other 2D materials. The company was focused on research institutes, and already sold over 65 systems with a customer list that includes Manchester University, the University of Cambridge, Stanford University and the National University of Singapore. planarTECH aims to expand its business by continuing to supply more R&D systems, initiate a system support service, start offering industrial-scale system (it already has strong interest from several potential customers) and also start producing CVD graphene and other 2d materials.

Universal Display reported its Q4 2019 financial results - revenues were $102 million, an increase of 45% compared to Q4 2018. Net income in the fourth quarter was $26.4 million.

Looking at 2019, UDC had a record year - with revenues of $405 million and a net income of $138 million. 2019 was a year of significant capacity additions, and 2020 will see less significant growth due to "capacity digestion". Looking into 2020, UDC sees revenues in the range of $430 to $70 million. UDC estimates that the coronavirus outbreak in China could lower its 2020 revenues by $40 - 50 million.

Photonics-based solutions provider Coherent reported its financial results for Q4 2019 - with revenues of $320.8 million, and a net profit of $5.8 million. The company says that these are encouraging results, and full-year outlook is improving.

Coherent's display orders were up significantly for LineBeam systems and service. These systems orders are all destined to China, and the increase in service orders "reflects higher demand for OLED-equipped smartphones in Q4 2019". Orders for OLED cutting using short pulse and CO₂ lasers were also up.

In August 2017, Japan Display announced a last-resort strategic focus on OLED displays as the Japanese display maker failed to shift to OLED displays in time. Since then JDI was busy trying to raise the funds needed to construct a large-scale OLED fab, raising $430 million from Oasis Management group and one of its customers (likely to be Apple).

As was discussed earlier, JDI now confirmed that Ichigo Asset Management will invest up to 100.8 billion yen (around $925 million) in JDI, and secure a stake of over 50% in JDI.

LG Display posted its financial results for Q4 2019, with a lower-than-expected loss of $361.6 million and revenues of $5.4 billion - a 10% increase over last quarter, driven by a rise in sales of OLED TVs and smartphone OLEDs.

LGD has given an optimistic forecast for 2020 as it sees higher demand for its OLED TV and mobile P-OLED panels. LGD expects its OLED TV panel revenue to "rise steeply" as its Guangzhou OLED TV fab increases its production - LGD now says it expects the fab to start mass production in March 2020.

OLED driver IC developer MagnaChip says that it expects revenues in Q4 2019 to reach $198-200 million, up from its earlier estimate of $181-191 million.

MagnaChip says that its OLED revenue was significantly better than had been expected.

In March 2017 OLED maker BOE Technology and OLED microdisplay maker OLiGHTEK announced a new $170 million joint-venture to produce OLED microdisplays for the consumer VR and AR markets

Once complete, BOE's fab will have the largest capacity in the industry - but this is not enough for BOE. Yesterday it was reported in Chinese media that BOE plans to build a second, larger OLED microdisplay fab in Yunnan. BOE will invest $257 million while a state-owned development group will invest $28 million. BOE will also raise $200 million from external sources. Total investment in the new fab will total $486 million.