What They Say
LG Display said in a regulatory filing yesterday that it has decided to boost its capacity for flexible OLEDs (which it calls pOLEDs) by investing $2.8 billion. Reports in Korea suggests this will enable new capacity of 60K substrates per month at Paju in Korea. The project will start this quarter and will continue until the first quarter of 2024.
What We Think
This is not a real surprise. The company has to boost its capacity for flexible OLED if it wants to maintain its small/medium share as the technology gradually displaces LCD and rigid OLED. Of course, the firm has traditionally been able to rely on some ‘captive’ demand from LG’s smartphone business, but now it will have to find all of the business outside. LG Display has long been a close supplier of Apple, so it is quite likely that Apple is the biggest target customer. That firm will be keen not to buy from Samsung Display.
Investors were not impressed, with stock prices falling yesterday, in line with the recent trend. The stock price hit a three year high in April, but has since been falling and is still below the price of most of the earlier years.
(apologies, a technical glitch meant this article was published 24 hours late!) (BR)
