Newsfilter article unlocker

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the 29th Oppenheimer Annual Technology, Internet, and Communications Conference. Our next session is going to be a fireside chat with the President and CEO of Universal Display Corp., Steve Abramson. Thanks for being with us today. Welcome. Thank you, Martin. Before I start, before we start, I'm supposed to say this. I may make some forward-looking statements in my remarks today. Our actual results may differ from those forward- looking statements, and we encourage anyone investing in the company to review our funds with the SEC. We pay our lawyers a lot of money to make sure I say that. So I've said that, and I checked that box. Back to you, Martin. Thanks, Steve. I'd like to begin a question on a more general industry one. So the industry is sending two very different signals right now. The panel makers are committing billions to new capacity, while the smartphone demand forecast softens on rising component costs. When you see capacity investments accelerating into a weaker consumer backdrop, what does that tell you about how your customers view the next few years? That's a good question. And I think part of it is we can hold two almost contradictory thoughts in our heads at the same time. short term and long term. I think it reinforces the difference between what's happening today and because as an industry, we need to plan for the future where the industry sees opportunities in the coming years. Smartphone demand has clearly become more cautious, driven in part by higher component costs. But the investments that we're seeing now are multi-billion, multi-year commitments to grow the OLED industry. And those decisions aren't based on a couple quarters of demand. What it tells us is that our customers continue to believe OLED adoption has a long runway ahead. I mean, it's only been 15 years. Look back 15 years, OLED had virtually no presence in smartphones. If it was a billion-dollar industry, you're being a little heavy on that one. Today, OLED penetration in smartphones is around 65%. The industry is over a $50 billion industry, And this shows how significantly adoption can evolve over time. And frankly, from an OLED industry, we believe we're still in the early innings in several other markets, smartphones being the first one. But OLED penetration in IT remains relatively low, about 5%. There's still significant opportunity across notebooks, laptops, and monitors, as well as automotive, which is roughly 1% of the market today. We have smartwatches, we have TVs, and the new Gen 8.6 capacity is being built because panel makers believe OLED presence in those markets, particularly, I think, in IT, will be meaningfully larger in the future than it is today. So while the smartphone market is having some softness right now for a number of reasons, the capacity investments, we believe, are really a vote of confidence in the long-term growth of OLEDs. Steve, next question is also on the supply chain. When we see memory prices putting pressure on everyone, are you seeing mainly bill of material pressure alter the panel specification? or mainly on the unit forecast at the mid to low end? So the memory price issue is also one of the near-term softness. And on pricing pressures, you've noticed for a while, this industry is always dealing with various forms of pricing pressures. It's always give me more for less. That's not unusual. But we haven't seen anything from our perspective out of the ordinary from a pricing standpoint. Our royalty and licensing structure, together with our long-term agreements, you know, helps provide our company a degree of stability, even as the broader environment will fluctuate. But what we have seen is primarily an impact on unit demand, particularly in the mid-range and entry-level smartphone segments where pricing pressures are more sensitive. And higher memory and component costs, you Know, can also affect affordability and purchasing decisions. And that seems to be, I mean, it's early terms, but that seems to be where we've seen the most noticeable impact. And as you know, beyond that, we generally don't comment on specific customer product decisions or roadmaps. Thanks. You know, most recent earnings, you have framed the second half of 26 as stronger than the first half, supported by product cycles. When you stress test that view, what gives you the most conviction and what is the bear case for the recovery slipping into 2027? Well, I'll start and hope that the recovery doesn't slip, but we'll get to that in a minute. Historically, in our industry, the second half of the year has tended to be stronger than the first half, and we entered this year expecting that pattern to hold. Major OEM product launches, new smartphone introductions, expanding OLED IT deployments, and also the benefit of holiday-related consumer electronic spending in the second half of the year. So that's traditionally a seasonality approach. What gives us confidence is that, as I mentioned, a number of those product and adoption cycles are naturally weighted towards the second half ofthe year. Looks like there may be some exciting products coming out. And we also expect revenue growth across customer segments compared to the first half. The bear case, well, it doesn't happen. Product launches may not perform as expected. They may get delayed. Consumer demand may get softer for longer, or the macro uncertainty could weigh on spending. On the other side, the bull case would be those things don't happen, but product launches are better than expected. Demand improves. The macro is better. The upside could be greater than the amount we're currently forecasting. And let us, in some respects, the industry monitors hope for the best, plan for the worst, and see how it plays out. It's uncertain times right now. Yeah, that's right. So we're seeing AI driving good demand across a large portion of the semiconductor ecosystem. What impact, if any, do you think AI ultimately has on the OLED demand and innovation? You know, AI affects us in a number of areas. One is you need, AI requires more energy. OLEDs are power efficient. UDC OLEDs, phosphorescence are energy efficient. So that's a really good thing for us. And so AI is creating many opportunities across many parts of the technology ecosystem. I mean, we're visual people. We deal with our eyes. That's how we absorb information. And displays are continuing to be a part of that story. It's AI is accelerating that story, and users are going to interface more through their screens, be them smartphones, tablets, monitors, and the like. um the power efficiency you know we we see all these issues about building big data centers for the the macro ai stuff well when it's at the edge in your hand power efficiency is also really important and that aligns really well with our um our technology roadmap for the last three decades we are the power we power efficiency company we're also leveraging ai internally Now, everybody's using it to try to get your facilities more efficient. That's not what I'm talking about right now. We've always been trying to use new technology tools to develop our materials faster, better, and smarter. So about a decade ago, we started investing a little bit in the quantitative aspects, AI, machine learning. We now have a strong team internally working on using AI ML techniques together with our experimental team to invent new materials quicker. And we've been able to do this over a decade. So this isn't something that we just started doing. And getting the computer scientists to talk to the experimentalists and make sure you have a virtuous cycle of invention is really important. And we've been able to do that. And this is potentially can accelerate innovation across our technology pipeline, both in OLEDs and, you know, we are the OLED company right now. We're focused on OLED. But this is such a powerful engine. We are starting to look at and plant some seeds in other aspects of organic electronics to see how this model may be able to apply. I want to switch the topic to capacity and overall the broader secular growth for IT. So newer fabs typically create a surge of qualification issue material loading before ramps into a full production as we see the new gen 8 lines ramps up through 2027. What utilization or design wing signals would tell you that IT adoption curve is tracking ahead of or behind smartphones? That's a good question. Let me take a couple pieces of that. Back when we started in the smartphone world, there was really one manufacturer and a small ecosystem, and not that much experience. So you did see that initial material loading qualification. qualification, then you actually saw a little drop before you started the production ramp. I think the industry's evolved from that a little bit. So I think that today is a much broader and a much mature ecosystem, multiple pattern makers investing in all these multiple OEMs, launching products, the cycle of the products are going to be different and evolve over time. There's established supply chains and also a wide range of successful OLED products that didn't really exist. So when you're looking at it, Samsung and BOE recently began mass production at their Gen 8.6 facilities. Visionox and China Star, Seesot, however you want to describe them, are continuing to advance their Greenfield Labs. LG Display and Samsung are also expanding their Gen 6 capacity. So the industry has committed more than $20 billion towards expanding OLED capacity. What are we going to look for? More products sooner. I mean, as a short form version, we expect to see broader OLED adoption because you now have the capacity in place across notebooks, tablets, and monitors, along with the OEMs expanding OLEDs across product portfolios. And we've been working with our customers on some of the technology designs for these new products. So it's not we're doing it in concert or tandem with the building of the fabs. And also, nowadays, consumers are using these devices more. They're using bigger models to use both for streaming video, to launch a content, and also using their notebooks or tablets, as well as their phones, for business as well As for pleasure. But people want the bigger screens, whether it's a foldable screen or an IT screen or a tablet, the bigger the bigger Screens are better enables you to get your content better. I don't want to talk about my grandchildren, but my grandchildren like looking at the cartoons on the tablet better than on the smartphone. But you like the bigger screen, so I think that's important and it can provide a premium media experience because OLEDs are well positioned. It delivers exceptional image quality, fast response time, deep blacks, power efficiency, wide viewing angles, and as manufacturing economics improve, the combination of performance, user experience, and economics, we believe, will help drive broader OLED adoption across all of IT. So we're looking forward to seeing these new products ramping into the future. You talked about industries evolution has opened up multiple pathways to commercialize phosphorescent blue and what are you and that universal display are broadening the program in response so what changed here is it in customers architecture material science or maybe both to move blue from a single development track to several parallel ones? It's a good question, Martin. And I think in some respects, it's all of the above. It's part of the industry maturity. We've mentioned it's grown to a $50 billion industry with multiple manufacturers, multiple products. And in the early days, you provide a new material with better efficiency, acceptable lifetime, and that worked into the market. But as the industry is evolving, the issues of color point, lifetime is becoming more important. Cost effectiveness is also more important, so the opportunity is more multidimensional than it was a few years ago. Because there's more products, because there's mehr applications, the display architectures and performance requirements have had to evolve. So, for example, watches, smartphones, IT, automotive, TVs, other applications each place different demands on efficiency, lifetime, color performance, and manufacturability. Now, some of them can combine, some don't can't, and the different OEMs can have different ideas. We are really well positioned in this because of our relationships with our customers. We can understand what their roadmaps are looking like and how we need to develop our technologies to respond to those roadmats with the different performance characteristics, which provide a broader range of materials and device architectures to get the phosphorescent blue into the market. Because of all the things we've been talking about, the IT space growing, AI growing, the need for power efficiency, all of these are drivers towards the implementation of phosphorescent blue or blue into the marketplace. Whether it's a phosphorescence blue combined with a fluorescent blue in different ways, because people are looking at how to combine them to get the best possible results. If we have phosphorescent blue, there are all the performance specs you would want today. Which product category do you believe will adopt it first? Well, I have my own ideas. This is really up to our customers. So what I will say is that all roads to phosphorescence blue and all roads to high-efficiency blue we believe go through us. But which product category, it's really up to our customers. Power efficiency is key, as we know. The ability to reduce power consumption or remaining performance is value across virtually every display category. How our customers are going to utilize that is up to them. And frankly, it is their role to describe to you what they want to use it for. I don't want to get out ahead. I don'T want to GET OUT OF OUR CUSTOMERS. I will say we see interest across virtually every display category because efficiency matters everywhere, whether it's improving battery life in mobile products or reducing power consumption in larger displays, the benefits are broadly applicable. So we really view this as the opportunity of spanning the OLED ecosystem, which is why the complications of what specific technologies to use are taking some time. I think you answered my follow-up question. Just to confirm, do you still think the power efficiency is still the top consideration when customers move to phosphorescent blue? I think power efficiency is the top consideration. But what we're seeing in the industry as well is using, it used to be, you may remember, we had power efficiency, color point, and lifetime. And power efficiency was supreme uber all us. We're now seeing in certain applications, color point is important. You've heard BT 2020 and things of that nature. So combining the phosphorescent energy efficiency with the color point that fluorescence can give you, you know, is a benefit. We still sell our phosphorescence materials. That works very well. And they're focused on that with, for example, green. With blue, people are talking about combining fluorescent materials with phosphorescent materials in various ways for the lifetime issue so that you still need the power efficiency. It's still the key, but adding additional materials into the mix is going to be helpful to get the products into the market quicker and broader products, broader products which again is one of the reasons why it's taking a little bit more time because it's it's adding complexity to the device design got it uh we're seeing increasing discussions in real commercial use cases of phosphorescence sensitized fluorescence so psf do you view psf as a bridge that pulls the phosphorescent adoption forward while full blue becomes ready or as a durable architecture in its own right? Well, that's an interesting predictive question. And we are working on both of those options and any others that may come about. Our goal is to make sure that our phosphorescent materials and technology are in all the products that are using OLEDs and the broader the product applications can be, the better off it is for us. So we're working with PSF because we can see that has certain advantages now. We also know that if we can get pure blue phosphorescence into the scheme that it can be dropped into the devices, that too has a lot of value. So we're following both of those paths. And if other paths come up, we'll probably follow those as well. But the combination of phosphorescence and fluorescence does seem to have certain advantages in the near term. And that does seem to have legs. On the other hand, to simplify the stack, it also would have legs, so we're falling all with both of those paths Thanks. Moving on to the competitor dynamic, a competitor in China called Summersprout. The company presents itself as the second global supplier to mass produce phosphorescent materials on independently developed IP and names universal display as its principal competitor. What does your visibility into the customer qualification tell you about where the Chinese supplier actually stand, how do you think about defending your share as they scale? Well, competition is not new for us. I mean, it may appear as though it is because we're sitting here three decades later and we're kind of like the sole survivor and basically supplying the market with phosphorescent materials. But if you go back into our history, we've had competition all along the way, including some big companies such as Kodak, DuPont, BASF, Merck, and others. And we have built a really strong competitive moat. And this differentiates us because we've always been building our competitive moot for the long term. We have more than three decades in this OLED industry, deep scientific expertise, largest technology development group in the area, manufacturing know-how. We have two big manufacturing plants, one in America, one in Ireland, broad intellectual property, strong customer relationships, and continuous innovation. We're continuing to invest in our technology pipeline. We still have the best-in-class, we'll continue to have best-of-class materials across the board, and we may focus on advancing and protecting our intellectual property. So we believe these strengths will position us to maintain our commanding market position for the foreseeable future. We're also focused, you know, our customers are principally in Korea, not principally, are in Korea and China. And so we're continuing to expand our global and local infrastructure. In China, for example, we opened up our Chengdu Technology Innovation Center to further strengthen customer collaboration. And I was out there in early June when we did the grand opening, and it was a very cool Chinese-type opening. They did the lion dance, and I gave the lion money, and the drum beating to come up, and there were speeches. And the facility is a really nice facility. That's our third facility. Our first technology innovation facility was in Korea, which we've expanded a few times. Then we set one up in Hong Kong, and now we have one in Chengdu. So we are really trying to get closer to our customers to ensure that we can provide the local support that they need, as well as the broad support for their international export markets and the like. And so when our customers look at us, because we've been working with a number of these customers for decades, I don't think we've ever lost a customer. They're evaluating not only today's materials, but also tomorrow's technology roadmap. They look at uns and they see somebody who's not only providing best-in-class materials today, but also working on providing best in class materials for the future, whether it's Blue, PSF, other next generation OLED innovations. And we believe that's a virtuous combination of innovation, support, reliability, and long-term partnership that will continue to differentiate us in the market, and we will be able to continue to grow our franchise. You know, earlier your answer regarding the application of AI, your reference to developing other organic materials, can you maybe give us a sneak peek of what you're thinking? Are you expanding beyond phosphorescent materials? Um, so we'll start by saying the vast majority of our company is focused on the OLED business and growing the OLED business. And we intend to continue to grow that. However, we are planting some seeds for future growth because we are seeing the we're seeing the opportunities of combining machine learning and experimental science. And as I mentioned earlier, we think that's a pretty strong model. And so if we go into other areas, we're looking at other areas of organic electronics, such as, for example, organic solar cells. So it's one of my favorites. I've always been interested in organic solar sales. But organic solar sales, in some respects, is an inside-out OLED. And something that maybe some of your listeners don't know when Ching Tang at Kodak invented the first OLED in the 1980s. The story is that it actually was an organic solar cell that he was doing, but he mixed the leads. So he created an OLED and off went the industry. Thank you again, Ching, if you're listening, because you did an amazing job in doing that. But we're looking, I believe, we believe AI machine learning has the potential to change material science, really has the potential to make new materials. Now, what we are at our core is a new materials, material science company. And we've been really successful in OLEDs and phosphorescent OLEDs, and we'll continue to do that. But if we can take that model and move that a little bit into some adjacencies, that may open up planting seeds for new businesses in the future. We are, I want to caution, we're at the seed planting level here. This is not like, oh, you're going to come up with something next year. But, you know, we have a lot of patience in UDC, and we grow for the long term, while now we grow for the short term, because we want to grow our short term. But we also make sure we plant the seeds for the longer term, so that they will come in as well. And we think that that's an opportunity in that area. Makes sense. Your company generates a significant amount of cash flow and maintains a very strong balance sheet. How are we thinking about capital allocation today between investment in technology, strategic opportunities, and returning capital to shareholders? So we do have, I think, a strong cash flow and we have a significant capital allocation philosophy that really hasn't changed much over time because it's grounded in our confidence of the long-term growth opportunities ahead of us, as well as continuing to generate significant cash flow. So we apply our cash flow across three priorities. First, investing in organic growth and innovation, phosphorus, as I talked to you a little bit about some of the seeds that we're planting, but phosphorus and blue and other next-generation OLED technologies is our primary focus. We continue to look at, pursue any high-return strategic opportunities that may align with our long-term growth strategy. We've not been an acquisitive company, but we look. And third, returning capital to shareholders through dividends and, more recently, share repurchases. So we initiated our dividend in 2017, and we've continually increased our dividend every year. And on the share repurchase side, we announced a $100 million authorization in April of 2025, which was fully utilized through the first quarter of this year. And then in April Of this year, 2026, we now a new $400 million authorization. And we believe this authorization reflects our confidence in the long-term growth trajectory of OLED, the strength of our business, and our ability to continue creating shareholder value and generating cash flow. The strength of Our Balance Sheet and cash generation will give us the flexibility to both invest for future growth while also returning meaningful capital to shareholders. We are getting one question from the audience. Summer Sprout has been shipping a green phosphorous emitter in China for a few years. How does your ex-China IP differ from your IP within China? And would you defend your monopoly in phosphorous emitters outside of China? We believe that it's very important to to defend our IP. China, the person that's asking the question, the within China market is a little bit different than the outside of China market. So, you know, defending our IP, defending our Ip across the board is very important. Defending the IP outside of china is a very important thing for us to be doing. Got it. And the final question, if we sit down at the conference a year from now, what do you expect will have mattered most? And what is the biggest misinterpretation, misperception about your display you would like to clear? Fair enough. I think the biggest factor is whether and when the industry transitions from today's cautious demand environment into the next phase of old adoption. I think the infrastructure is there. The ability is there, it's really, you know, our consumers are the product going to be out there, our consumer is going to buy it. And right now, consumers are pretty cautious. So will that transition into the next phase of all adoptions? Now, the macroeconomic factors are not something that we can influence very much, but what we can do is we can control continuing to invest in innovation, make sure we continue to meet our customers' needs, meet and exceed our customers', needs and requirements, and position ourselves for long-term growth. um you know the biggest misperception is right now i think you just asked the capital allocation question we're a very strong company we have generated a lot of cash we have an extremely strong position in the oled ecosystem we're going to have that position for the foreseeable future I think people are a little focused on when's blue coming. It's like, okay, well, when blue comes, and it will come, then our company will grow faster. But we're still continuing to grow. We grow a little bit less than the industry growth rates. When blue comes or maybe tandem, we can grow in excess of the company growth rates, but I think the overemphasis on blue, I don't say blinded, but people didn't realize how strong a company we are. And part of the capital allocation questions, I think go to that issue. Got it. With that, it concludes today's presentation. Thanks again, Steve, for your time and insight today. Thanks everyone for attending. Thanks, Martin. It was my pleasure.