Universal Display Corporation (UDC) - Page 26

Universal Display unveiled a new single-layer hybrid organic-inorganic encapsulation technology for OLED (or other thin film devices). The new technology can be used on rigid and flexible substrates and may accelerate commercialization of plastic substrates based displays.

The new technology uses environmentally-benign and non-toxic materials in a potentially low-cost process. UDC collaborated with the Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University to demonstrate the technology effectiveness, and the implementation was supported by the US DoD, DoE and the National Science Foundation.

Universal Display and Samsung announced another extension (till June 30, 2011) to their license agreement (that was announced back in 2005). Samsung will continue to use UDC's PHOLED materials (red, and soon green) in their AMOLED products.

This is the fourth three months extension between SMD and UDC - the companies still can't seem to negotiate a new agreement.

Back in 2006, we published an interview with Andy Hannah, Plextronics' president, CEO and co-founder. Andy agreed to do a follow-up interview to update us on Plextronics' business and technology.

Plextronics is a US-based company (established in 2002, as a spin-out from Carnegie Mellon University) that is developing technology that enables broad market commercialization of organic electronic devices - including OLEDs, plastic chips, polymer solar cells and organic sensors.

Q: Andy, can you give us a short introduction to your OLED technology?

Q: The benefits of OLEDs include, of course, being printable, low cost and demonstrating enhanced device performance. Plextronics’ technology plays a key part in achieving these benefits by reducing operating voltage in devices and thereby increasing lifetime and power efficiency.

Panasonic Electric Works (PEW) and Idemitsu Kosan announced that they will establish a new joint venture for developing, manufacturing and marketing OLED lighting panels. The new company will be called Panasonic Idemitsu OLED Lighting and it will combine PEW's design and manufacturing technologies with Idemitsu OLED materials.

PEW OLED Lighting panels

The new company will have 10 employees at the time of establishment. PEW will owe 51% and Idemitsu will own the rest (49%). The initial company capital will be JP¥ 15 billion ($182 million).

Update 2: Universal Display announced the pricing of the public offering: $46 per share. They will sell 5 million shares (plus additional optional 750,000 if there is over-allotments). The net proceeds will be around $217 million (and $250 million if the optional shares are sold as well).

Update: According to a Korea Times article, UDC lost the patent suit in Japan, and their PHOLED material patents have been invalidated - which means that other companies can make phosphorescent OLED materials, at least in Japan. We're not sure if this report is valid though as UDC said yesterday they are still awaiting news on that lawsuit, and we're not sure if those patents aren't material...

Universal Display announced plans to offer 5 million common stocks, which will raise around $225 million according to the current stock price. UDC has around $70 million in cash currently, so it'll be interested to see what they plan to do with so much money. Perhaps they want to acquire a company or they actually do plan to become an OLED lighting manufacturer...

Universal Display (UDC) posted their financial results for 4Q 2010. The company had $10.8 million in revenue for 4Q - which is more than double the revenue in 4Q 2009. The company enjoyed an increase of both commercial chemical revenue and development revenue. The operating loss was just $210K (compared to almost $4 million last year), although the net loss was $5.3 million (due to non-cash loss on stock warrant liability). UDC currently has around $70 million in cash and equivalents.

It seems that UDC is finally starting to enjoy Samsung's increased capacity and AMOLED shipments and UDC expects their technology to migrate to large-sized displays and lighting panels.

Back in September 2000, Universal Display (UDC) licensed 74 OLED related patents from Motorola. Today the company announced that it will purchase those patents, and so terminate the license agreement and stop paying royalties to Motorola.

Here's a full list of those patents:

Japan's OLED lighting fair started in March 8th, and we got some interesting OLED Lighting news. NEC lighting is showing several OLED lighting lamps using their upcoming panels - which will be 10x10cm ones offering 60lm/W efficiency - which is actually very good. The company plans to commercialize them in fiscal 2011 (which ends of March 2012). NEC is using UDC's PHOLED materials, which explains the relativly high efficiency.

NEC OLED lighting

Panasonic Electric Works is another company that's developing OLED lighting panels based on UDC's materials, and now we hear that they too plan to commercialize their panels in 2011. We don't have any technical details on those panels yet.

Universal Display has signed a technology & licensing agreement with Moser Baer for OLED Lighting panels. Universal Display will provide Moser Baer with OLED materials and technology assistance. This follows the two companies joint project to design and build a white OLED lighting manufacturing facility in the US. This project was awarded $8.3 million from the US DOE (total cost will be around $20 million) - and the first pilot line is scheduled to be online during 2011.

There's an interesting article over at the LATimes about HP's flexible display research. HP has been showing flexible e-paper prototypes for quite a while, and they say they expect to deliver a prototype to the US army by year's end. Carl Taussig, director of advanced display research at HP Labs in Palo Alto, reveals that the company is also working on flexible OLEDs. Flexible E Ink is closer to commercialization - but it is monochrome and not suited for videos, and that's why HP is also looking at OLEDs.

HP's Flexible E Ink display

In October 2010, Universal Display (together with LG and L-3) announced that they delivered 8 flexible wrist-mounted OLED displays for the US Army. These are 4.3" QVGA full-color OLEDs, made on a amorphous-Silicon (a-Si) TFT, fabricated by LG
Display.