Financial - Page 25

IHS Markit says that the global OLED smartphone market totaled $3.8 billion in Q2 2019. The top producer was Samsung Display had a market share of 82% ($3.15 billion in revenues).

The second largest OLED smartphone maker is China's BOE Display that had a 12% market share ($456 million in revenues). BOE experienced very vast growth - its market share in Q4 2018 was only 4% and in Q1 2019 it was 9%.

BOE says that it shipped 9.1 million AMOLED displays in the first half of 2019 - better than expected as Huawei increased its OLED penetration to 24% in Q2 2019 (up from 9% in Q2 2018). BOE though warns of weak demand for flexible OLEDs and the company lowered its 2019 fully-year guidance to 30 million units (down from 30-50 million).

BOE further announced that it will delay the phase 3 of its Chengdu B7 6-Gen OLED fab due to the weak flexible OLED demand. CLSA estimates that BOE ships more than 60% of Huawei's flexible OLED displays. Over 90% of BOE's OLED revenue is attributed to Huawei, but BOE aims to add one or two new customers starting in Q4 2019.

China-based Tianma announced that it plans to construct a 6-Gen flexible AMOLED production line in Xiamen. The company will setup a joint-venture with the local government that will help finance the new fab, which will cost an estimated 48 billion Yuan ($6.8 billion USD).

Tianma estimates that it will take 30 months to construct the fab, which means that initial production is estimated to start in February 2022. The new fab, when in full capacity, will product 48,000 6-Gen substrates each month.

China's Jilin Optical and Electronic Materials is building a new OLED R&D center in Jinshan, China.

Jilin will invest 600 million Yuan (around $85 million USD) in the new R&D center, which according to the company will be the largest OLED material R&D center in China.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q2 2019. Revenues were $5.4 million, down from $7.1 million a year ago and eMagin had an operating loss of $2.9 million (down from $3.6 million in Q2 2018). At the end of the quarter eMagin had $3.7 million in cash and equivalents.

eMagin says that the second quarter of 2019 was a challenging one for the company, as deliveries were impacted by continuing production issues and revenue and profitability fell short of expectations. The company is taking several actions to address the shortfall and are seeing early signs of progress. The company's backlog remains strong, at $11.6 million (an increase of approximately $1 million over the backlog of $10.6 million at December 31, 2018).

Korea-based Doosan Corp is planning to spin-off its OLED materials unit. The company's shareholders approved the plan. The new company will be called Doosan Solus, and will list on the Korean stock market on October 1st.

Doosan Solus will take over Doosan's OLED materials unit, which produce host materials for OLED displays. The company will also produce battery foil materials and bio components used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

China-based OLED producer Visionox announced plans to establish a flexible and foldable OLED module factory in Guangzhou, China. Together with the local government, Visionox plans to invest 11.2 billion Yuan (around $1.6 billion USD) in this new factory.

Visionox did not provide any time frame for this new fab. The company is currently operating a 6-Gen AMOLED production line in Hebei (with a monthly capacity of 30,000 substrates) and has announced plans to establish a similar flexible OLED line in Hefei in a $6.3 billion investment.

The South Korean government says it will spend around $6.5 billion in the next five years to help the local materials, components and equipment sectors and lower its dependence on Japanese imports. This follows Japan's government decision to restrict some material exports, including fluorinated polyimide, to South Korea, following a diplomatic tension between the two countries.

Korea hopes to ensure a stable supply of 100 strategic items (selected from a list of 1,100 industrial items that are imported mostly from Japan) and will assist local R&D activities, lower import barriers and reach out to suppliers in other countries. Korea mostly aims to protect its chips, displays, cars, electronics, equipment and chemicals industries.

Universal Display reported its financial results for Q2 2019. Revenues were $118.2 million, the operating profit reached $48.7 million and net income was $43.4 million. UDC increased its 2019 revenue guidance to be in the range of $370 million to $390 million. The company ended Q2 with $553 million in cash and equivalents.

The Q2 results include about $15-20 million of orders that UDC estimates were pulled-in from the second half of 2019 as Chinese customers build up inventory for trade-related reasons.

2019 is shaping up to be a dramatically-low investment year for the OLED industry. DSCC for example expects that the market will fall 88% in 2019 compared to 2018. Two companies reported their financial results this week, with interesting notes about the OLED market.

First up is France-based effusion cells and sources producer Riber. The company reported that H1 2019 revenues in its evaporator business fell from €10.4 in H1 2018 to only €1 million. The sharp decline is linked to the "freeze on investments in OLED screen production equipment following the major investments made in previous years".