Universal Display Corporation (UDC) - Page 5

Phosphorescent materials are based on the addition of a heavy-metal to the emissive materials, and most (if not all?) commercial materials use Iridium. The price of this rare metal has hit an all-time high last week.

Towards the end of last year, the price of one oz of Iridium was $1,760. Last week it hit $6,000 - the price jumped over 300% in just three months. Experts explain that the price has risen due to a disruption in the supply in South Africa (which supplies around 80% of the global market) and strong demand from the electrical and electrochemical sector.

PPG Industries and Universal Display established a strategic relationship in 2000, and since then PPG is the exclusive producer of UDC's PHOLED emitter materials. The two companies announced that they will establish a new manufacturing site in Shannon, Ireland, for the production of UDC's emitters.

The new facility will double the production capacity of UDC's OLED emitters at PPG, and will also diversify the company's manufacturing base. UDC leased the Ireland site (which, up until now, was producing pharmaceutical intermediates) and will adapt it to PHOLED production. Facility improvements and regulatory approvals are expected to be completed in the next 12 months, and operations are scheduled to commence in early 2022.

Universal Display reported its financial results for Q4 2020. Revenues reached a record of $141.5 million, and net income was $54 million. For the whole of 2020, revenues reached $429 million and net income was $133 million.

UDC expects meaningful growth in 2021, and believe revenues will be in the range of $530 to $560 million. The company also announced an increase to its quarterly dividend (to $0.2 per share).

DSCC posted an interesting post with its latest views and forecasts on the OLED material market. The company expects AMOLED stack material sales to grow at a 18% CAGR in the next five years, from $294 million in 2019 to $2.46 billion in 2024. Compared to its previous estimate, DSCC sees higher sales as demand for OLED TVs and OLEDs in the IT market (tablets and notebooks) is increasing.

DSCC also posted an analysis of LGD's new evo OLED material stack. Compared to LGD's "standard" WOLED stack, the evo adds an emitting green layer to improve the brightness by 20%. This of course adds an extra material cost to the panel price.

A couple of months ago we reported that researchers at UDC developed an OLED device with plasmonic decay rate enhancement that dramatically increase device stability. It turns out that UDC filed for two new trademark applications that seem to hint it is aiming to commercialize this technology.

The two trademarks at PLASMON PHOLED and PLASMONLED, which both of course indicate that these are emitters that adopt plasmon technology.

Researchers from the University of Michigan, in collaboration with Universal Display are developing a low-cost roll-to-roll (R2R) process to produce flexible OLED lighting panels. The goal is to achieve a panel cost of less than $10 per klm - a tenfold reduction compared to current costs.

The roll-to-coll system can continuously produce encapsulation panels, at high speeds and reduce costs. The front plane (organic stack) deposition is done via OVPD. The researchers say the will demonstrate reliable, encapsulated 25 cm² flexible white OLED panels with an efficacy of 50 lm/W and a CRI >85 on barrier-coated plastic films or thin glass.

Universal Display reported its Q3 2020 financial results, with revenues of $117 million (up from $58 million in Q2 2020 and $98 million in Q3 2019, and a net income of $40.5 million. UDC ended the quarter with with $673 million in cash and equivalents

UDC reports a significant pickup in customer orders in the third quarter, and the company expects full-year 2020 revenues to be in the range of $385 million to $400 million. UDC sees meaningful growth in the OLED industry in 2021 and beyond.

Researchers at Universal Display, developed an OLED device with plasmonic decay rate enhancement that dramatically increase device stability. By including a nanoparticle-based out-coupling scheme to extract energy from the plasmon mode, the researchers managed to maintain the device efficiency.

The device used an archetypal phosphorescent emitter to achieve a two-fold increase in functional stability at the same brightness as a reference conventional OLED device and extracted 16% of the energy from the plasmon mode as light.

Universal Display reported its financial results for Q2 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic continued to impact UDC, as customer orders and shipments declined. UDC reports $58 million in revenues (down from $112 million in Q1 2020 and $118 million in Q2 2020) and a net income of $800,000. Part of the reason for the revenue drop were two orders made in Q1 (worth $44 million) as safety-stock due to the trade concerns and COVID-19 uncertainties.

While the second quarter was very disappointing for UDC, the company reports that demand has picked up in July (the first month of Q3) as customer orders increased. There are still "significant uncertainties" ahead and the company will not provide any guidance until visibility improves.

Japan Display says it is developing a new OLED production technology that will enable higher resolution and higher efficiency OLED displays, and the company is in talks with potential customers regarding a joint investment in producing next-generation OLEDs.

According to JDI's CEO, the company is using a new manufacturing technology that is different to the evaporation method currently used by OLED makers. It is not clear what is meant by that - it could be an inkjet-printing technology (but achieving high resolution for smartphone displays with inkjet printing is a challenge) or something like OVPD or OVJP - or a new technology developed in-house at JDI.