Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Universal Display's Q1 2022 earnings conference call. My name is Sherry, and I will be your conference moderator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to Darice Liu, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please proceed.
Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Universal Display's first quarter earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Steven V. Abramson, President and CEO , and Sidney D. Rosenblatt, EVP and CFO . Before Steven V. Abramson begins, let me remind you that today's call is a property of Universal Display. Any redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of any portion of this call in any form without the express written consent of Universal Display is strictly prohibited. Further, this call is being webcast live and will be made available for a period of time on Universal Display's website. This call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the live webcast of this call, May 5th 2022 . During this call, we may make forward-looking statements based on current expectations.
These statements are subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in the company's periodic reports filed with the SEC and should be referenced by anyone considering making any investments in the company's securities. Universal Display disclaims any obligation to update any of these statements. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Steve Abramson.
Thanks, Darice, and welcome to everyone on today's call. We are pleased to report that revenue in the first quarter of 2022 was $150.5 million. Operating profit was $62.3 million, and net income was $50 million, or $1.05 per diluted share. The adoption of OLEDs continues to increase in a myriad of applications, including AR/VR, smartphones, foldables, IT, TVs, and automotive. In addition to increasing proliferation of OLED smartphones in the mid-range and even some low-end models, the landscape of foldable smartphones is also expanding. Vivo launched its first foldable smartphone last month, and Google is expected to launch its first foldable smartphone in the second half of this year.
According to Omdia, foldable smartphone display shipments are forecasted to grow more than 100% year-over-year from 9 million units in 2021 to 20 million units in 2022. On the foldable IT front, it has been reported that HP is working on a 17-inch laptop that you can fold into just 11 inches. Samsung is also reportedly looking to commercialize a foldable laptop. Earlier this year, Samsung unveiled the Flex Note concept at CES, a foldable laptop that has the portability of a 13-inch laptop when folded and a 17-inch wide monitor size screen when unfolded. What was once just CGI created for movies, foldable and rollable displays are now becoming a reality. The evolution of form factor in consumer electronics is just beginning. OLEDs are essentially film layers that are inherently conformable, bendable, and rollable.
Additionally, OLEDs can be manufactured on glass, metal foil, and plastic. The versatility and flexibility of OLEDs is energizing the consumer market with new ideas, designs, and products. OLED momentum continues to accelerate in a broad range of consumer electronics, particularly in the IT segment of tablets, notebooks, and monitors. Market research firm DSCC forecasts significant OLED IT growth in the coming years, a 45% CAGR for OLED tablet units, 51% CAGR for OLED notebook units, and a 104% CAGR for OLED monitor units from 2021 to 2026. With the move to OLED IT, there are reports that leading panel makers are planning to adopt a tandem structure. Tandem structures are expected to increase brightness, lifetime, and efficiency, as well as lower power consumption of OLED panels. The world of OLED TVs remains bright.
In addition to Samsung Electronics garnering great reviews for its first hybrid QD-OLED TV, LG Display reaffirmed its plans to increase OLED TV shipments in 2022 to almost 10 million units, up from slightly under 8 million units in 2021. As we look to the OLED market, we believe that panel makers and OEMs are preparing for an extensive new wave of medium and large area capacity investment. Driven by an escalating push from leading OEMs for OLED IT products and meaningful strength in the OLED TV market, there are reports that leading panel makers, including Samsung, LG Display, and BOE, are planning to invest in Gen 8.5, 8.6 capacity for OLED IT. For the OLED TV market, there are reportedly ongoing investment discussions to expand Gen 8 capacity even further.
During last week's conference call, Samsung announced that it expects its display sales to increase as its portfolio of foldable products expands and from accelerated adoption of OLEDs in new application areas such as IT, where demand has increased in the pandemic. Gaming, as portable gaming device OEMs are moving to higher picture quality displays, and automotive, where there is increasing demand for premium displays in markets like electric vehicles. In addition, Samsung announced that yields for its recently launched hybrid QD-OLED displays have improved faster than projected and reached 75%, and that it plans to grow and expand its QD-OLED display lineup. LG Display shared on its recent earnings call the company's positive OLED outlook for the second half of the year. For OLED TVs, LG Display intends to expand its customer base and product portfolio.
In small and medium OLEDs, LG Display expects profitability to improve in the second half as new smartphone models with LGD's OLED displays are introduced. Another growth area that the company highlighted was automotive, and that OLEDs make up approximately 30% of LG's premium auto display orders today, and that it expects that percentage to continue to increase. BOE Technology Group recently announced that it shipped approximately 60 million OLED units in 2021. As BOE looks to 2022, it is planning to ship more than 100 million OLED units or an increase of more than 60% year-over-year. On the capacity front, BOE recently opened up the first phase of its third Gen 6 OLED fab in Chongqing and is focused on bringing online phases II and III this year.
Each phase has a capacity output of 16,000 plates per month, adding up to 48,000 substrate starts per month when the plant is fully ramped. Similar to BOE's two other gen six fabs in Chengdu and Mianyang. At the end of March, Tianma announced that its new gen six flexible fab in Xiamen has started trial production and that it expects to enter mass production by the end of the year. This OLED plant, when fully ramped, will have an installed capacity of 48,000 substrate starts per month. Also in March, China Star reaffirmed its plans to ramp its gen six flexible OLED capacity at its Wuhan plant. China Star's first OLED fab has a monthly installed capacity of 45,000 substrate starts.
On the lighting front, while we are still in the early commercialization stage, we believe that the benefits of OLED lighting, which includes high power efficiency, novel and innovative form factors, beautiful natural colors, and cool operating temperatures, are all quite compelling. As OLED activity continues to flourish, we remain steadfast in our commitment to advancing our robust OLED materials and technology leadership. On the OLED front, with our deep and broad experience and know-how of more than 25 years of pioneering research, we are innovating, inventing, and introducing new OLED phosphorus and emissive materials, including new reds, greens, yellows, and hosts. With respect to blue, we continue to make excellent progress in our ongoing development work for a commercial phosphorescent blue emissive system.
We believe that we are on track to meet preliminary target specs with our phosphorescent blue by year-end, which should enable the introduction of our all-phosphorescent RGB stack into the commercial market in 2024. We believe that the commercial introduction of our full-color emissive stack will unlock a vast array of opportunities for higher energy efficiency and higher performance across a broad range of OLED applications. We also continue to make considerable progress with constructing the key subsystems for our OVJP alpha system design. The completion of these subsystems is a critical step in our commercialization roadmap. While the commercial launch of OVJP is still a few years away, we believe that OVJP represents a groundbreaking platform towards low cost, high performance, high throughput, highly efficient RGB side-by-side OLED TV manufacturing. On that note, let me turn the call over to Sid.
Thank you, Steve. Again, thank you everyone for joining our call today. Revenues for the Q1 of 2022 were $150.5 million, compared to Q4 2021's $146.2 million and first quarter 2021 $134 million. Our total material sales were $86.7 million in the Q1 of 2022, compared to material sales of $85.8 million in the Q4 of 2021 and $79.8 million in the Q1 of 2021. Green emitter sales in the Q1 of 2022, which include our yellow-green emitters, were $66.4 million. This compares to $66.7 million in the Q4 of 2021 and $60.5 million in the Q1 of 2021.
Red emitter sales in the Q1 of 2022 were $20.2 million. This compares to $18.9 million in the Q4 of 2021 and $19.1 million in the Q1 of 2021. As we have discussed in the past, material buying patterns can vary quarter to quarter. Some of the contributing factors include COVID-19 issues as well as consumer product demand cycles, capacity ramp schedules, production loading rates, device recipes, product mix, material ordering patterns, customer inventory levels, and customer production efficiency gains. Since a number of these factors are moving variables for our customers, they are also moving variables for us. First quarter 2022 royalty and license fees were $59.8 million.
This compares to $56 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 and $50.9 million in the Q1 of 2021. Q1 2022, Adesis revenues were $4 million. This compares to $4.5 million in the Q4 of 2021 and $3.3 million in the Q1 of 2021. Cost of sales for the Q1 of 2022 were $33.2 million, translating into overall gross margins of 78%. This compares to $32.2 million in gross margins of 78% in the fourth quarter of 2021 and $23.3 million in gross margins of 83% in the first quarter of 2021.
Cost of OLED materials in the Q1 of 2022 were $29.9 million, translating into material gross margins of 65%. This compares to 66% in the Q4 of 2021 and the comparable year-over-year Q1 material gross margins of 74%. As we have noted in the past, material gross margins can vary quarter to quarter. Q1 2022 operating expense, excluding cost of sales, was $55.1 million. This compares to $57.5 million in the Q4 of 2021 and $47.1 million in the Q1 of 2021. Operating income was $62.3 million in the Q1 of 2022, translating into operating margins of 41%.
This compares to $56.5 million and operating margins of 39% in the Q4 of 2021, compared to $63.6 million and operating margin of 47% in the Q1 of 2021. The income tax rate was 20.1% for the Q1 of 2022. Net income for the Q1 of 2022 was $50 million or $1.05 per diluted share. This compares to last quarter's $45.9 million or $0.96 per diluted share, and the comparable year-over-year's quarter of $51.7 million or $1.08 per diluted share. We ended the quarter with approximately $838 million in cash equivalents, and investments, or $17.67 of cash per diluted share. Moving along to guidance.
Our outlook for the year remains unchanged. We expect 2022 revenues to be in the range of $625 million-$650 million, with the ratio of material to royalty licensing revenues expected to be in the ballpark of 1.4 to one. Lastly, our board of directors approved a $0.30 quarterly dividend, which will be paid on June 30th 2022 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on June 16th 2022. The dividend reflects our expected continued positive cash flow generation and commitment to return capital to our shareholders. With that, I will turn the call back to Steve.
Thanks, Sid. The trajectories of the OLED market and of Universal Display continue to be very bright. Some macro headwinds may continue in the near term. At the same time, OEMs, panel makers, and the ecosystem are setting the stage for a significant new wave of OLED capital investments and OLED market proliferation. As a key OLED innovations partner, we continue to be well-positioned to participate in the myriad of exciting opportunities that lie ahead. As a fast-moving, forward-thinking company, we continue to target new opportunities for growth. We are broadening our core competencies, bolstering our worldwide footprint, and expanding our global team to fuel our strategic initiatives and increase our first-mover competitive edge.
We are working closely with our customers as they map out their product roadmaps for the coming years and are building on the breadth of our more than two and a half decades of experience and know-how, and are continually innovating and developing enabling materials and technologies to support our partners and the OLED industry for the near term, midterm, and long term. Driving our path forward is our strong corporate culture and stewardship, which you can learn more about in our recently published 2021 Corporate Social Responsibility Report. Our CSR report can be found on our website under Corporate Responsibility. Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank each of our employees for their drive, desire, dedication, and heart in elevating and shaping Universal Display's accomplishments and advancements.
We are committed to being a leader in the OLED ecosystem, achieving superior long-term growth and delivering cutting-edge technologies and materials for the industry, for our customers, and for our shareholders. With that, operator, let's start the Q&A.
Thank you, Mr. Abramson. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question is from Krish Sankar with TD Cowen. Please proceed.
Hi, this is Steve calling on behalf of Krish. Thank you so much for taking my question today. Steve, if I could start, ask a question regarding some of the comments you made regarding customer, your customer plans for increasing OLED production in the coming year. I just wanted to ask about sort of the implications for emitter material usage. Given some of these CapEx expansion plans of your customers, do you have any thoughts on whether overall emitter materials intensity will stay about flat going forward on average? Or just given, you know, the usual yield ramp curves and maybe potential process recipe changes, do you see, you know, the material usage intensity going up or down over the coming year because of those new production ramps?
Thank you for your question. You know, with Steve talking about some of the issues that new capacity coming online, you know, there are a number of Gen 8.5, Gen 8.6 capacity coming online really aimed towards the IT market, which there's only about 2% penetration in today. It is something that, you know, we see as one of the big areas for growth over the next few years for us. In terms of material utilization, I think you're asking. There's a couple of things I think you're asking. One is having to do with different structures that we've heard about and that you've read about tandem structures. That is something, you know, it's really in the early days of development for that.
You know, we think there's probably more material per square inch, that of ours that would go into the product. However, we can't really say just because it's called tandem, that is two times. We do think it will be. As you're well aware, all of this new capacity for us is all new revenue opportunities for our materials.
Okay. Got it. Thank you for that. The second question for Sid. In terms of gross margins, and specifically material gross margins, so the last few quarters, material gross margins have sort of been in the low-to-mid 60s% range. Just kind of curious, you know, compared to the more historic, roughly 70% material gross margin level, what kind of drivers or, I guess, levers would you need to see happen in the coming quarters for those material gross margins to get back to that 70% level? Is it customer mix, or is it, you know, potentially air transport fees that need to moderate for that to happen? Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you. You know, 65%-70% material gross margins is our target for 2022. You know, higher development materials, increasing complexity of our next gen materials, as well as higher raw material pricing, you know, such as Iridium costs that we've talked about, have added to our COGS. We are really working diligently on cost reduction programs to maintain our gross margin profile.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question is from C.J. Muse with Evercore ISI. Please proceed.
Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. I just first wanted to ask regarding the weakness that we're seeing globally around consumer electronics demand, particularly in the lower end, how that's impacting, you know, your business. You know, what kind of impact are you seeing in the supply chain in terms of willingness to hold inventory, your inventory? And then from a mix perspective, how you're seeing your customers kind of decide between LCD and OLED for both smartphones and TVs.
Yeah. Well, I think there have been, you know, ongoing headwinds, you know, pandemic, component shortages, economic uncertainties. I mean, the consumer electronics industry is a very dynamic industry, and it is something that, you know, we look at pretty much consistently. Right now, we have not seen anything from our customers that would change what's going on. I mean, our orders are coming in now as expected, and it's, you know, may lead into one of your next questions, which is, you know, that's why we have essentially kept our guidance the same for this year of $625-$650 because, you know, we are pretty much on track.
Okay. Very good. I guess a longer-term question. As you prepare for the launch of blue and commercialization in 2024, how should we think about the implications to your financial model in 2023 perhaps, or into 2024? You know, what should we be thinking about, whether it's from an investment perspective or OpEx perspective?
Well, right now, C.J., we're really focusing on the technical progress to get to the commercial blue. Hit the targets at the end of this year and get to commercial blue in 2024. We believe it's going to be a significant new revenue opportunity. You may see some stuff in 2023, but we think it's really gonna be a 2024 event, and we think it's gonna be significant.
Thank you.
Thanks, C.J.
You're welcome.
Our next question is from Sidney Ho with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.
Thanks for taking my question. I want to follow up on the blue emitter side. Now that you announced the timing of blue for the last few months, do you have any additional color that you can provide in terms of customer development, timing of ramp? Do you get a sense from customers how they plan to adopt blue in their product lineup? Do they tend to ramp up all the SKUs at the same time or just phasing it out? Or any kind of comparisons with red and green emitters in the past that would be helpful. Thanks.
Sidney, those are all really good questions, and there is very strong interest in the industry for our blue phosphorescence. The questions that you ask, unfortunately, are really questions for our customers, and our conversations with them are confidential. We really can't, you know, answer those questions specifically. We believe that it, the significant value of an all phosphorescent stack is going to unlock a vast array of opportunities across a broad range of OLED applications from small to medium to large consumer products.
Okay. That's helpful. Maybe my follow-up question is the other technology, the OVJP side. I know it's still a few years away from being ready, and there's a lot of progress being made. I think when I think of OVJP, I think of it as a technology mostly associated with large displays and specifically related to TV. How do you think OVJP is an enabler in the IT market as well? Does that make sense from a cost perspective or performance standpoint? And if so, does that accelerate the deployment of that technology? Thanks.
Sure. We're really focusing on TVs, large area TVs, 4K and 8K types. It's our current focus is on the large area TVs. Market opportunities may go beyond OLED TVs, but that seems to be the initial target market that we're focusing on.
Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome.
As a reminder, just star one on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask a question. Our next question is from Atif Malik with Citi. Please proceed.
Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. My first question is, are you seeing or did you see any impact from the lockdowns in China? Are any of your customers changing their, you know, buying because of the lockdowns in China?
So far, we are not seeing any impact on us from the Chinese lockdowns. This is one of the headwinds.
Great.
I was gonna say, this is one of the headwinds that we have been keeping an eye on. We'll see what happens.
Great. My next question is, what's being called the fourth generation of OLED materials, hyperfluorescent materials. There is a Polish startup company that's talking about this HF technology being superior to phosphorescent materials because it does not require any heavy metals or rare earth elements. Just curious on your comment on this next generation of OLED materials, and are you working on something similar in-house?
We're focused on phosphorescence. We believe that that is the best technology. It's been in products for almost 20 years. Frankly, as the leader in this industry, we understand where the benchmarks for a number of R&D companies and their laboratory are research experiments. But we— our technology has been commercial for a long time, and we believe that it will be the gold standard for the foreseeable future.
Great. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Our next question is from Mehdi Hosseini with SIG. Please proceed.
Yes. Thanks for taking my question. Most of my questions have been answered. Just have a follow-up. Just want to see what the team is thinking about more than $14 per share cash and your ability to generate a lot more cash. Do you have any plans in becoming more aggressive in capital return or investment in other areas? Any insight would be great given your free cash flow margin and what you already have on the balance sheet.
Well, Eddie, you know, at this moment, we believe that quarterly cash dividend is the best way to return cash to our shareholders. It is something, this allocation is something that we look at every quarter. We're also looking for, you know, opportunities, whether it's acquisitions or acquiring IP or companies. It's something that we are always
Looking at and trying to do something that will help move the technology and the company and OLEDs forward.
Sure. Would it be fair to assume that your core technology and IPs can be theoretically applied to other applications other than display?
There are. You know, we're looking at lighting, we're looking at other opportunities for organic electronics and solar cell technology, life sciences. There are a number of different areas that thin-film technology, and particularly our phosphorescent OLEDs, may have opportunities as the industry and we become more mature.
Got it. Thank you.
Our next question is from Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.
Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. I had to hop on a little bit late, so apologize if some of this is redundant. I guess maybe starting off with your number one customer, Samsung. I know the contract seems to be getting more attention just given the timeline around it. Any high-level thoughts you can share would be helpful just around the renewal agreement or, you know, would you anticipate, now that you know, you continue to expect blue specs to get achieved later this year, that you start working on a new agreement for a portfolio license just given, you know, the historical precedent for how long it's taken for you to get deals signed with this customer in the past?
Well, Brian, as you know, we've had a long and strong partnership with Samsung for about 20 years. We've signed multiple agreements with them, and we plan to continue working with them for the foreseeable future. Of course, until anything is finalized, we can't comment on the status.
All right. Fair enough. I appreciate that, you know, that color, Steve. I guess staying on the topic, the blue phosphorescent, again, I'm sure a lot of this has been asked already. On the specs, you're reiterating the view that you'll achieve them by the end of this year, and you announced this obviously last quarter. It seemed like it was a bit of a surprise just given the amount of sort of finite timeline you put around it. Be curious what the customer feedback has been since, you know, since the announcement last quarter and anything kinda quantifiable, maybe if you're seeing more sampling activity or you're seeing any discussions around preliminary pricing here for the blue phosphorescent.
Well, you know, blue phosphorescent has been something the industry has been waiting for a long time, and they are very excited to be working with us on blue phosphorescent and working towards the commercialization efforts. All of our customers are interested in various products.
Would you say there's any sort of change in the discussions, just given your update to the market, and to the industry, three months ago?
Yeah, I think that what I would say is there's been more interest as we continue to move forward. As we continue to make progress, continue to talk to our customers, there's additional levels of enhanced interest in it because, you know, as we talked about previously, we have ongoing R&D programs with multiple customers.
Okay, that's great. Just last one on the model here. The Adesis margins, I noticed, a little bit lower, you know, sub 20% here. They had been kinda tracking pretty consistently in the 30%+ range for the past couple of years. Anything to read into that? Is there something mix-related or something in the quarter that might have taken those margins down? Is this a one-time anomaly, or should we expect this level of margins going forward for this part of the business?
Yeah. Adesis margins, you know, they can fluctuate, in a sense, based upon contracts and timing of some of the expenses. We anticipate that Adesis revenues will grow this year, and we don't see anything really different than historical amounts.
Sid, while I have you, could you remind us what is the Adesis relationship or sort of can you contextualize where they fit into the grand scheme of things when it comes to your blue commercialization and ramp-up efforts?
Well, most of the Adesis technical people are working on phosphorescent materials, and they're an integral part of our chemistry team, which includes what we're doing on blue. Yeah. The revenue and expenses that we report are the CRO part of the business, which is a contract research organization. All the other stuff just falls into underneath UDC.
All right. Fair enough. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Brian.
Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the program back over to Sid Rosenblatt for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you all for your interest and time tonight, and I wish you all a good night. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.