Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us. We're getting to the back end of the conference here, so thanks for joining late in the day on day two. You know, next up, we have Universal Display. For those of you who aren't familiar with the company, I always call it its Qualcomm-like position as it relates to OLEDs. In terms of intellectual property and, in their case, materials, the emitters that go into that market as well. Presenting on behalf of the company, we have Brian Millard, CFO. Brian, thanks so much for joining us.
Yeah, thanks, Scott. Appreciate you having us. Thanks to Roth for hosting. Before we kick off, just have a quick safe harbor statement. I may make some forward-looking remarks as part of my comments today, and our actual results may differ from those. We would encourage anyone considering investing in the company to review our filings with the SEC.
That's a great disclosure, 'cause then we'll just jump right in on, on.
Yeah, let's do it.
Recent comments. In terms of 2025 guidance, right? You kind of wide range out there, but 3% kind of down the middle. Kind of take us through, you know, what's factoring into the guidance right now, just from a high level, what you're seeing. I know there's a range out there, kind of high level and low level, the swing factors.
Yeah, for 2025, we put out a guide of $640 million-$700 million. The midpoint, it's $670 million at the midpoint. It's about 3.5% growth off of where we were last year. That reflects, you know, industry growth, depending on, you know, which analyst firm you look at, probably in the 5%-6% range. Our growth rate just being slightly less than that. In terms of what the various factors are at the high and the low end, I think there's a lot of macro, you know, uncertainty this year just in terms of, you know, how various end markets may end up.
We just wanted to take into account, you know, a variety of different possibilities that may play out just based on some factors this year that are a little bit different than what we've seen in the last few years.
Maybe let's jump in on some of those end markets. Historically, smartphone has been a big driver, and you guys are 50%+ penetration into that marketplace. There's growth, but not as much. It's small display size, so not huge in terms of acreage. IT in general, right? Tablets, monitors, computers, have been a big driver. It's getting up to almost, I think, 10% of the mix now in terms of square footage, square acreage. How is what, what's, what are the big drivers there? What are you guys seeing on that front in terms of demand? Is that really the big drivers we start to think of over the next two to three years?
Yeah, so there's really three key end markets that we monitor. The first, as you said, Scott, is smartphones, which, just for the first time last year, eclipsed 50% penetration. All the premium models that are out there sold globally have OLED displays for the most part. We've seen increasing penetration even in the mid-tier and low end of OLEDs continuing to take share from LCD in that space. A lot of room to grow, we think, still in the smartphone market. IT, as you said, right now, we're about 3%-4% penetrated in the IT segment. There's a lot of momentum in IT.
That's certainly, as you look forward the next few years, that's the segment that we see as the highest growth rate, because there's a number of OEMs that plan to introduce OLEDs into their product portfolios over the next few years. We saw that last year, the iPad Pros for the first time had OLED displays. And we think that there's many, you know, leading brands that plan to introduce OLEDs into their IT portfolio in the coming years. Evidence of that is really that our customers, many of them have announced new capacity investments that they're making in capacity for the IT market. IT is really tablets, laptops, and monitors. Samsung has announced an investment that they're making. It's expected to be ready for production in 2026, based on our understanding.
BOE has also announced an investment they're making in new capacity for IT, expected to also be online next year. Most recently, Visionox, which is another one of our Chinese customers, announced capacity that's expected to come online thereafter. $20 billion of investment that those three companies have announced. They're clearly making those investments because they see an opportunity in terms of the OEM product roadmaps over the next few years.
Again, that's Gen 8.6 stuff, so it's IT-focused.
Exactly. Gen 8.6. It'll be IT-focused. It'll have the ability to make smartphones if desired. Our understanding is the needed capacity is really for the IT market based on a lot of the OEM roadmaps in the coming years. That penetration of 3%-4% today, you know, many analysts that track the industry are estimating that by 2030, that could be about 20%. A lot of opportunity for that to grow. The size of those displays being larger than smartphones also is a compelling opportunity for our business because that's more surface area for our material to cover.
In terms of surface area in the one market we didn't hit on, is TVs. You know, the simple math is 100 smartphones equals one TV, roughly, depending on the size. Huge, huge opportunity there. That market's kind of been slow to develop, right? As we look at over the last couple of years, it started to ramp pretty quickly and then, you know, started to, there's still growth, but it's, I think, tracking below prior expectations. What's kind of behind that? Is it simple pricing in the marketplace, or is there something else going on?
Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, certainly, the TV market, I think the TV market more broadly, even independent of OLEDs, has been, you know, a little bit stagnant over the last few years. I think that also has to do with, you know, folks consuming media on tablets and other devices. You know, the TV growth market, TV market growth has not held up. In terms of OLEDs, you know, I think that OLEDs have come down significantly in price compared to LCDs and other technologies. It's much more competitive on price than it was, you know, years ago. It is still a premium offering. It's also a premium display in terms of the quality.
For people who value and prioritize the quality of the displays, the true blacks, the contrast ratios, all the visual benefits of OLEDs, it's a no-brainer to pay, you know, a few hundred dollars more and get the OLED display. For a price-conscious consumer, there still are cheaper alternatives. I think that that gap we would expect to continue to narrow in terms of price over the next few years. We have, you know, we're optimistic it'll continue to grow. It's just not, historically, been the rate of growth we would have expected.
Let me ask you along those lines. OVJP, which enables you to, you know, print materials on a much larger substrate. Is that a requirement to open up the TV market or, or no? That's like to get drive, deep, deep penetration below, you know, to above 20%, 30%, or something like that. Can you, can we get to good growth rates before OVJP?
Yeah. OVJP is printing, dry printing technology that was developed by the company. It stands for Organic Vapor Jet Printing, and we've been performing R&D for a number of years on the technology. We set up a subsidiary in California a few years ago to advance the progress of that program. Have had a lot of, you know, great progress in that over the last few years, and we still think it's a great opportunity for display going forward. We did recently announce a little bit of a strategic pivot, and we are closing down the California operation and transitioning to an R&D team in Singapore that'll be focused on assessing not just display, but also non-display opportunities for, for OVJP.
As it relates to the TV growth and, and continued penetration there, you know, there's sufficient capacity, you know, for today, in the, in the TV, you know, networks that are manufacturing fabs that our customers have. There's opportunity for us to continue to see, you know, strong growth in TVs. Right now, there's probably capacity for about 10 to 12 million units of TVs annually. The estimates are this year, there's probably going to be about a little more than 7 million units sold. A lot of opportunity for growth independent of OVJP, but we still think that OVJP is a great cost-effective platform in the long run for, for TVs.
Maybe shifting to the macro for a minute, and maybe start with tariffs. Last time around when we saw tariffs go into effect on China, there was a big pre-buying, I think that occurred ahead of that cycle. Did not seem like that happened this time. Can you clarify if there was any pre-buying? What tariffs in general are kind of representing in terms of impact to you? I know it is not direct in many cases. It is going to be indirect through some of your OEMs. What are you seeing out there? What are you anticipating?
Yeah. In terms of the buying patterns and the inventory levels, we haven't seen anything out of the ordinary at our customers. It's been fairly, you know, consistent. That said, I'll say that consistency has also been a little bit haphazard in the sense that some customers of ours have had a little bit more variable and lumpy ordering patterns. You know, I think that continues to be the case. Specifically, our customers in China have historically had a little bit of a lumpiness to their ordering patterns.
In terms of tariffs, I think that what we've been doing internally for, you know, a number of years now is making sure that we're looking at our supply chain, both in terms of where we manufacture, but also how we source our raw materials to make sure we have diversity and we provide ourselves with optionality as best we can. Key to that was setting up manufacturing in Ireland, which we did, starting in 2021. We have a manufacturing plant in Shannon, Ireland, where we can manufacture products and ship directly to our customers from. That continues to be a great lever, not just from a, you know, a tariff perspective, but also just making sure we have capacity in our network to meet the demand that we see in the next few years.
Because we were running out of capacity in the U.S., and we knew we needed additional capacity and finding, a non-U.S. source we thought was a great way of just diversifying our supply chain.
How much capacity do you have in Shannon?
When fully operational, and by that I mean, you know, all phases of CapEx and development, it will have doubled our capacity compared to previously. It's a large campus. It's about a 16 acre campus, a number of structures that, you know, we are using a portion of at this point, but we have room to continue to grow as volumes grow and the industry continues to expand.
Maybe just on the macro front, there's some high-level concerns. Just wondering if you're seeing that or hearing any concerns from your customers or elevated inventory levels or anything of that nature.
We've not seen anything out of the ordinary at this point, but we're, you know, certainly monitoring things and, you know, we'll be providing an update in early May here.
I'm proud of myself. We talked for 10 minutes without getting to blue. Now it's time to talk about blue emitters. You guys said in, you know, 2024 and then more recently in your update as well, months, not years. Take us through months, not years, right? How do we interpret that, you know, just in terms of what you guys are saying and how that translates then to timelines of commercial specs and how that flows through ultimately to designs and revenue?
Yeah. For folks not familiar with our materials, we sell phosphorescent red and green material today that are used to create OLED displays. Blue is the third color to create displays. We've had a technology project underway for many years in R&D to invent blue material. We announced in 2022 that we thought in 2024 we would have commercial performance of that material. We've now had a little bit of a delay to that timeline, but we continue to feel very confident in the project and the progress that we're making, the level of customer engagement and interest, as well as in the broader, you know, OEM community. We know that phosphorescent blue will be very beneficial for our customers in the industry. That benefit is really on the energy efficiency that it'll bring.
It'll be about a 25% increase in the energy efficiency of that display by introducing phosphorescent blue in place of the fluorescent blue that's being used today. We're still working closely with our customers, providing them with development quantity of material to use for their testing and R&D on their side. We still believe very much that we will be confident, we'll be successful in commercializing the material. There's nine to 12 month design cycle from, you know, when we will hit commercial specs and our customers will believe that it's ready for use, to when you would see a product in market. That's typically what we see on the red and green side. We would expect the same, with blue once we hit commercial specs.
Just to clarify, in the months, not years, that timeline effectively started December 31st. Is that correct?
Correct. Yeah. We said the months, not years was in reference to the delay beyond 2024. Yes, it was at the start of this year.
To just go back to blue commercial specs, what are the, what are the gating factors? What are the key elements that your customers are really looking for? Commercial lifetimes, brightness? What, what, where do you need to get to when you're talking about hitting those commercial specs?
There are three characteristics when we're developing any of our materials, whether it's red, green, or blue. The first being, what is the color? How deep or light is the color? You know, is it a really deep blue or is it a light blue? The second being energy efficiency. How much energy does it consume to emit light? The third being, what's the lifetime? How many, you know, years would it last under a normal, you know, use case by a consumer? Of those three, you know, lifetime has been the most challenging to get to, you know, the commercial spec. We've seen improvements in lifetime.
It is really challenging to have all three of those characteristics in one material because you can solve for, you know, one of the characteristics, but you might be shifting the other out of spec. Really having one material set that has all three performing at the commercial levels is the challenge. We continue to feel confident in the path that we're on and that we'll be able to get there.
Do all customers have the same required, quote unquote, commercial specs, or are you talking about a standard level and then they may vary based on that individual customers?
There's a general spec that we believe would be suitable for the industry that we're targeting at this point.
Okay. To go back to the timeline, assuming sometime this year, it's nine months probably until we see commercial product at your customers, or commercial product as an end product in the marketplace.
Yeah. Once commercial specs would be achieved, whatever date that might be, it's typically nine to 12 months beyond that when you would see a product in the marketplace.
You're talking about in a smartphone at that point in time. You would see revenue obviously ahead of that maybe by six plus months in terms of selling into your display customers who are then selling to the various smartphone OEMs or whoever the customer base is.
Yeah. It remains to be seen whether it's a smartphone or another application that would be first to market with phosphorescent blue. That's something we just don't have visibility to at this point. You know, we're focused on hitting the commercial specs. But yes, it would be, you know, typically nine to 12 months and increasing revenues, as you said, from commercial specs to ultimate commercial introduction. Because, you know, we would need increasing quantities at our customers in order to go through mass production runs and prepare for that commercial introduction.
I think you've indicated you're basically engaged with all your major customers on this front. Is that correct, right? There's some level of blue engagement for every meaningful customer that you guys deal with?
We've multiple customers in multiple regions that are working on phosphorescent blue with us.
In terms of the overall market opportunity, I think, you know, green is at a $250 million year run rate. How realistic is it to think about blue achieving that once you hit go from commercial spec? You know, is it going to rival green? Is it going to be bigger than it because there's effectively no competition and you have pricing power? How do you guys think about it? Because your share should be 100% certainly out of the gate.
The quantity of green and red blue in a display are very similar. So, from a quantity perspective, you know, if they were equal, equivalently adopted in across our customer base, you know, the quantities would be the, be similar. The pricing is one that, you know, we've not yet reached commercial pricing for blue on with any of our customers. Those are conversations that we'll continue to have with them as we get closer to commercial introduction. But we believe there's a premium price associated with blue. We've been, you know, spent a significant amount of time and resource over many years to bring this to market. And we believe there's a premium price associated with it. I think that's, that's understood. The adoption curve and exactly what that looks like is very hard to predict at this point. You know, which models go first?
You know, what are those more premium models with larger volume? Are there, you know, how does it exactly look? That we need more information. We're focused on getting to commercial spec that enabling our customers to introduce it. We know there's significant interest not just from our customers, but from the OEMs and the broader market in introducing this. You know, we do think it will be adopted. You know, there's no reason why it shouldn't be used. Like anything, there will be an adoption curve and the exact slope of it is very hard to predict at this point.
In, just in terms of AI, right? We hear a lot more about that, obviously, in terms of devices at the edge. If you look at smartphones, it's increasing the power requirements and processing requirements within the device itself. Outside of the processor, the display is the biggest consumer of power. How important is this in the overall context of shifting more and more AI to mobile devices? Are customers talking about that? Is this a meaningful conversation that you guys are having?
The energy efficiency, whether it's red, green, or blue, is something that our customers are continuously going after. If you look even on the red and green side, where we've been, you know, selling material for many years, 10+ years, in the case of both colors, we've been able to increase the, or decrease the energy usage, increase the energy efficiency of our material significantly over the last few years. That enables our customers to then, you know, you know, translate that into the OEMs and ultimately unlock that energy efficiency for use in AI or other things. Blue will be exactly the same.
That energy efficiency can be used for either power-consuming features like AI, thinner form factors because a smaller battery can be used, or potentially, you know, even the battery lasting on a single charge for a longer period of time because of the less consumption on the display. There are a lot of different ways the energy efficiency can be leveraged, but increasing the energy efficiency of the materials has been something that's been fundamental to our business for many years.
Let me ask you about competing technologies. I'll specifically talk about blue and emitters. TADF has been talked about from time to time. Is that, or are there any other materials that you're seeing as competitive threats, either to the core red and green business or to blue in the future?
Yeah, we don't, we don't view anything that's competitive to phosphorescence. We continue to believe that all paths to high-efficiency blue go through our materials. We're not, you know, concerned about alternative technologies at this point to blue.
What about, just from a general display standpoint? MicroLEDs got a lot of attention a couple of years ago. I think they've run into some scaling issues and otherwise. Are you seeing anything out there that makes you worry from a competitive standpoint in terms of where OLEDs are positioned going forward?
Yeah, OLEDs, we believe have a long runway to grow. We talked earlier about the very low penetration rates that we have today now, especially in the IT and TV markets. We see that as key growth opportunities for us. As you said, you know, microLEDs took a little bit of a setback last year. There are still folks focused on it. We still believe that the manufacturing challenges will be quite challenging to overcome. We continue to believe that OLEDs, because of the benefits they bring in terms of energy efficiency, the true blacks, the contrast ratios, as well as the fact that there's really an embedded manufacturing capacity for OLEDs and momentum, that it'll be very difficult to find a cost-competitive solution to OLEDs in the near term.
Certainly, IT is a driver near term, but are other vertical markets like auto starting to creep into the conversation? Where does general lighting fit in? That's always been out on the horizon. Is that something even worth talking about now, or is it too far out there?
Yeah, I think general lighting is something that, you know, there are OLED, there are lighting products in market. They are more, you know, less cost-competitive. We see it as a small growth opportunity for us. Not a lot of material, consumption, you know, per, per device, compared to, to the displays. In terms of automotive, that's a key growth driver for us, you know, going forward in terms of continuing to see more autos, adopt OLED displays, especially EVs. We've seen, you know, a lot of opportunity for growth there. It's a relatively low base there. You're talking roughly 90 million units annually of vehicles sold globally, and then a fairly low percentage of OLEDs today within that segment, but an opportunity for growth in the next few years.
Capacity has always been a big driver of the performance of Universal Display. I think the number you talked about, capacity growth from an industry perspective, growing 10% from 2023 to the end of 2025. Now, that stated, you were talking about some larger fabs. There are multiple Gen 8.6 fabs that are supposed to come online in 2026. Is 2026 shaping up to be an inflection year from a capacity growth standpoint, you know, given some of these larger substrate facilities, the potential to add some more in, in the next couple of quarters?
Yeah, certainly. As you said, we expect 10% growth in installed capacity from the end of 2023 to the end of 2025. It's important to note also that there's, you know, some underutilization in the existing installed capacity. Our growth is not limited just by the 10% of new installed capacity coming online. We certainly do think that in 2026 and beyond, because there's a number of products specifically in the IT space that are expected to be introduced over the next few years, that's a key opportunity for us. As we said earlier, the size of those displays being larger than a smartphone is also very compelling.
Additionally, in IT, something that we haven't talked about yet is the fact that many of the new IT products coming to market have what's called tandem displays, which is a display that has two emissive layers. You know, probably somewhere between 1.5x-2x the quantity of material from UDC that's required to produce those displays compared to a single layer technology.
By the way, I apologize for not catching that earlier, but what percentage of the marketplace is moving, you know, towards that type of display technology?
It's in IT, some are tandem, some are still single layer. It really just depends on the product. The iPad Pro that was launched last May has a tandem display. Apple actually marketed it as a tandem display. There will be products in market. There are many today that are also single layer IT products that have, you know, very nice brightness and lifetime. It's going to be a mix, we think, going forward. I don't have an exact percentage for you.
Do you, do you know where industry capacity utilization is these days? You said underutilized, but is there a number that goes along with it?
It depends on the segment. TVs, for example, we talked earlier about the 10 to 12 million units of capacity and currently about seven of production this year. It just varies across, you know, the smartphone and IT base today. We still think that there's room for us to continue to grow, you know, even independent of these new capacity that's coming online in the next year or two.
Maybe we'll wrap up with a simple financial question. You guys are in the luxury position of having about $1 billion on the balance sheet. You generate a lot of free cash flow. You don't have a lot of capital requirements. How are you thinking about cash utilization and returning that to shareholders?
Yeah, so we've had a dividend program in place for a number of years. Returning capital to shareholders is certainly a priority of the Management Team and the Board. We've increased that dividend annually as well. We aspire to continue doing that. We do evaluate buybacks periodically. It's just not been something we've done in a meaningful way. Also, investing in the business is a priority for us. Looking at either M&A opportunities, we've acquired a number of patent portfolios over the company's history, or having the cash on the balance sheet to be able to, you know, invest in certain programs from an R&D perspective is also, you know, an important priority for us. There are a number of reasons why we've kept the capital in the business, but we also do prioritize returning it to shareholders as well.
With that, I think we've reached the end of our time. Brian, thank you so much for being here.