What They Say
LG Display held its quarterly earnings call. The company did well although down on Q4 with revenue down 8% QoQ to $6.2 billion with net profit of £240 million. Smartphone shipments were down. Area was down from 8.54 million m² from 8.66 million in Q4. ASP was up $736, down from Q4 by 7% but up 30% on a year ago.
IT panels were 40% of revenue, with TV at 31% and mobile down from 34% to 29%.
Looking ahead to Q2, the company sees ‘solid demand’ for TVs and IT products, with area growing while ASP will fall by “mid- to high single digit’, again because of smartphone seasonality. Part supply remains a source of uncertainty. IT will remain a focus.
Responding to questions, executives said they remain positive about OLED TVs and will make decisions about capacity expansion in Guangzhou as the demand for panels becomes clearer in the next six months. There is no clarity on when the TV OLED panel business will be in profit, but this depends on costs and yields and the firm said that both are going in the right direction. LCD TV panel production is now finished in Korea, but the company wants to stay flexible to react to different market demand for LCDs.
Responding to a question about automotive, the firm sai that orders have grown from $7.6 billion at the end of 2020 to $8.8 billion now.
In response to a question about OLED promotion in IT (by Samsung, of course), the firm said that it was confident that if this time OLED started to really penetrate, it could react to that.
What We Think
There were rumours that the company would reveal a breakthrough in inkjet printing of OLEDs on this call, but it didn’t happen. (BR)
