At the 25th Annual Needham Growth Conference, Universal Display Corporation’s CEO, Steve Abramson, and CFO, Brian Millard, sat down for a fireside chat. The talk occurred at the same time as the company had announced that it was on track to deliver commercial phosphorescent RGB stacks in 2024 based on the results with phosphorescent Blue in 2022, the development of which having met the company’s target specifications.
Universal Display has been chipping away at the OLED market with phosphorescent Green, but Abramson goes on to say that the company sees significant upside across the board for his devices, including smartphones, although there is a lot of opportunity in televisions. Which nicely segue wayed into a conversation about the company’s contract with Samsung, signed in December, 2022. However, Millard pointed out, “So we have had red and green agreements with Samsung for a number of years, so we kept to that and we will have a separate discussion with them on Blue. We continue to collaborate really closely with their team on Blue. So, at the right time, we’ll make sure the contracts are in place to enable the commercial launch in 24 that we referenced.”
My takeaway is that the company has underutilization in some areas, specifically talking about its plant in Shannon, Ireland, and therefore it will probably looking for more market penetration into televisions (bigger screens, bigger panels, and hence, bigger manufacturing opportunities than a comparable market penetration into mobile products). The company also sees increasing adoption in the IT market of OLED displays in 2024. That means that while companies are going to be somewhat conservative on investment right now, that is not going to last long because of expected increases in demand in 2024.
