Universal Display announced that it has signed long-term OLED agreements with BOE Technology Group. Under these agreements, UDC will supply phosphorescent OLED materials to BOE. UDC and BOE signed their first agreement in 2014 and it is great to see these evolve into long-term agreements.
BOE started to produce flexible OLED displays at its Chengdu B7 6-Gen fab in October 2017. BOE's B7 fab is the company's first flexible AMOLED line and actual real mass production will probably begin at about Q1 2018. The full capacity is 48,000 substrates per month, but this will only be achieved in the first half of 2019.
In addition to this fab in Chengdu, in October 2016 BOE announced another 6-Gen OLED fab, in Mianyang. The Miangyang fab will have a similar capacity (45,000 sheets per month) and will enter production in 2019. As BOE is aiming to become an OLED supplier to Apple, it is reportedly planning its third flexible OLED Line.
Comments
As far as I know, this is standard procedure. We'll likely get minimum transparency at the next conference call for UDC. However, to get an idea of what's happening at BOE over time, we can now look at how "Customer 3" or "China Customer 1" revenue trends throughout the quarters.
The PR say nothing about minimum quantities or license fees (Unlike the 2011 Samsung contract which has these clauses). Further, the nor PR or the SEC filing shed more details, they are highly obscure. No mention of the "term", or any commercial details what so ever.
Was BOE able to bend UDC ? hence the limited disclosure ? seems like that