Financial - Page 27

The Netherlands based SALDtech, established in 2018 as a spinoff from the TNO institute, announced that it closed its 2^nd financing round led by Innovation Industries and BOM, Brabant Development agency.

SALDtech developed deposition tools based on the Holst Centre's Spatial Atomic Layer Deposition that can be used to produce large area ultra-thin layers with world class performance. SALDtech says it will used the investment to develop and build flexible OLED production equipment.

Last month Reuters detailed the upcoming $2.1 bailout deal for Japan Display, led by a group of investors from Taiwan and China, including TPK and the Harvest Group. TPK and the HG are supposed to invest 80 billion Yen, but a new report from Reuters says that the plan is not finalized yet.

In what could just be a negotiating tactic, Reuters reports that the company informed JDI that they have not made a decision yet and are now "re-examining the prospects for Japan Display’s business performance". In any case it seems that JDI's future is not secure yet.

Organic-TFT backplane/emitter developer Mattrix Technologies (previously nVerPix) announced that it has closed its Series A financing round, with $3 million in investment from Samsung Ventures and JSR Corporation.

Mattrix Technologies, spun-out of the University of Florida in 2011, developed the world's first full-aperture OLET (organic light emitting transistor) display technology, based on the company's proprietary CN-VOLET (carbon-nanotube enabled, vertical, organic, light emitting transistor) technology, a new pixel architecture that combines the drive transistor, storage capacitor and light emitting layers into a sequentially deposited, vertical, transparent stack. The company is also looking into graphene electrodes as an alternative to CNTs.

TADF developer CYNORA announced that it has secured $25 million in its Series C funding round from investors in Asia, Europe and the US. Since 2008, Cynora raised $80 million.

Cynora's latest deep-blue material specification was presented in May 2018 - with a CIEy of 0.14, EQE of 20% and a lifetime of 20 hours LT97 at 700 nits. Cynora expects to have blue material in mass production by 2020. In October 2018 Cynora extended its joint-development agreement with LG Display.

Universal Display announced that it has formed a new corporate venture arm called UDC Ventures. UDC Ventures plans to invest and partner with new start-ups and companies with an emphasis on technology platforms that have a strong proprietary position and significant growth potential.

UDC Ventures has several strategic sectors of interest, including OLED, organic electronics, displays, lighting, materials science and other related areas. UDCV will invest in companies at all stages - from early R&D through late-stage established companies.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q1 2019. Revenues were $6.1 million (down from $6.1 million in Q1 2018) and net loss was $1.4 million (down from $2.1 million in Q1 2018). At the end of the quarter, eMagin had $3.5 million in cash and equivalents (before its latest financing round).

Regarding its consumer business, eMagin updates that it successfully processed the first 4k x 4k wafers for its Tier-1 consumer electronics partner and has confirmed its ability to develop a large-area silicon OLED microdisplay with no visible non-uniformity. It plans to finalize the first full-color prototypes in Q3 2019.

Universal Display reported its financial results for Q1 2019, with revenues of $87.8 million, an operating profit of $34.3 million and a net income of $31.5 million. UDC sees solid momentum in the OLED industry and it is raising its 2019 revenue guidance - to be in the range of $345 million to $365 million. UDC ended the quarter with $527 million in cash and equivalents.

Regarding its blue emissive system development, UDC says that it continues to make "excellent progress" in its ongoing development work. UDC still cannot predict when its blue OLED will be commercially available.

LG Display reported disappointing financial results for Q1 2019 - with an operating loss of $113 million. LG Display warns that the whole of 2019 will fall short of expectations - due to high costs of its new OLED fabs, weak LCD panel prices and low adoption of its smartphone OLEDs.

LGD's smartphone OLED business still suffers from low yields and low fab utilization as the company finds it hard to secure design wins and compete with Samsung Display. Some reports even suggest that LGD is thinking about shutting down its flexible OLED smartphone business.

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. In 2017 JDI announced it is beginning to seek funds for the change in focus, and since then we have heard of several plans in place.

Reuters now details the upcoming $2.1 bailout now being prepared for JDI. According to Reuters, a group of investors from Taiwan and China, led by TPK and the Harvest Group will invest 80 billion Yen (around $720 million) in JDI. In addition, the Japanese government INCJ fund will provide 77 billion Yen in bonds and will also accept a debt-to-equity swap worth 75 billion. The total deal is worth around $2.1 billion.

JOLED announced that it has raised 25.5 billion Yen (around $228 million USD) from INCJ, Sony and Nissha. JOLED also announced that it has started to build post-processing module production lines at its Mobara, Chiba prefecture, plant. Nissha will also collaborate with JOLED in the area of OLED touch sensors.

JOLED's printed OLED displays will be produced at the company's Nomi plant. JOLED currently uses a pilot 4.5-Gen line at Nomi, but the company has already announced plans for a new mass production 5.5-Gen line in Nomi by 2020.