All right, so hello everyone, I'm Matthew Prisco, Semiconductor Analyst at Evercore ISI, and today we have the pleasure of hosting Brian Millard, CFO of Universal Display, leading supplier of OLED emitter materials, and a pure play on industry OLED adoption. So thank you for joining us today.
Thanks for having us.
So to jump right into things, I believe today is your one-year anniversary.
It is
as CFO of Universal Display. So first off, congrats.
Thank you.
Would love to hear your thoughts one year in. What surprised you the most? What have been some of the changes made under your stewardship, and what are some of the areas that are strategic priorities for you over the next one to three years?
Yeah, so as you said, I've been here with the company about a year now, or exactly a year today. Really was impressed in joining the company with the depth of the organization, the quality of the people. Clearly, we have a really strong industry position, which is great as well. And I'm really excited about the years ahead. We've got a lot of great opportunities ahead of us in the next few years. In terms of changes, really, I inherited a well-functioning organization, so didn't need to make a ton of changes off the bat, so it's really been more fine-tuning of things. And those have been the key changes that have been made.
All right, perfect. So last quarter, you tightened your 2023 guidance range, pulling up the low end by $10 million. What gave you the confidence to make the guidance more precise at this point in the year, particularly given the uncertainty in the overall market and historically limited visibility? Any green shoots we should be thinking about or increasing visibility through year end?
Yeah, I think it was really more a function of we started out this year with a wider guidance range than we typically have. $50 million is where we started out in terms of the, the width of the range. As we got into setting guidance or updating guidance, in early August, we really just felt like we had more visibility to the year and felt like the lower end was not really on the table. And so felt like, having a $40 million range was reasonable as we, as we exited Q2.
All right. That's fair. Now, moving on to 2024, UDC has called for this to be a pivotal year for the OLED industry and, and your company, based on macro recovery, OLED adoption in IT market, and initial blue commercialization. So as we sit here today, how would you rank order these three different growth drivers in terms of impact next year, and how maybe has that changed over the past 3-6 months, if at all?
Yeah, so I think certainly taking them one by one, the macro recovery, I think a lot of folks in the consumer electronics industry have said that toward the end of this year, we would expect improving macro conditions, and that's embedded in forecasts from a number of companies, and we're not unique in that spot. As it relates to IT, there's really a number of leading OEMs, consumer electronics companies, that are expected to adopt IT OLED into their IT portfolio in the coming years. Next year is certainly... There's a number of well-rumored reports of certain folks adopting OLED into their tablet series and others in next year. So that's clearly underway and in progress.
As it relates to blue, we've continued to make progress in our development efforts for a phosphorescent blue emitter, and feel like we are on track to have commercial specifications met next year, which will enable our customers to introduce phosphorescent blue material into their products. So really, all of them, like, it's hard to rank order one, 'cause they're all kind of moving in a positive direction in our view. But we're really excited about the opportunity that we see in 2024 and beyond.
All right, perfect. So digging a bit deeper into each of those and starting off with everyone's favorite topic, blue. First, how has your progress tracked over the last 3-6 months relative to your expectations? And then second, you've spoken about the commercial availability in 2024, though no further detail around timing. So what obstacles are still ahead of us that need to be alleviated for you to fine-tune that messaging a bit, maybe call first half, second half, or any greater granularity?
Yeah. So as it relates to the progress that we made, and how that compares to expectations, really, it's been consistent with expectations. We had a kind of roadmap, that our team had set out in terms of continued improvement in the performance of our material. We've continued to move along that path, so it's really been as expected, and we continue to see each generation of our material improve performance, which is all progress that leads us to feel like in 2024, we'll have those commercial specifications met. Timing exactly, is it beginning, middle, end of 2024? It's really hard to say at this point.
We still have more work to do to develop the material and have it meet those commercial specifications, but we know that we are moving in the right direction, and we can see that in 2024, we'll have those specifications met. But hard to put an exact timeframe on it at this point.
All right, perfect. And then maybe you could help us think through the path to blue revenues flowing through once a commercial product is announced. What is the typical design cycle from customers giving you specifications, to manufacturing the emitters, to actually selling them into a panel? And then, as a follow-on, how should we think about customer adoption of the product? Is this kind of a dip-your-toes-in-the-water type process, or is this go all in given the efficiency benefits?
Yeah. So the design cycle typically is our customers will come to us with a specification of what they're trying to achieve in terms of color, efficiency, lifetime of a material, and various other factors. Our team will work to develop material or identify material that we have already developed that meets those specifications. And then from there, there's a process of our customers performing experiments and tests on their side, feedback, them ultimately , providing panels to the OEM for, for testing and sampling, and then final design and then mass production. So it tends to be a roughly 9-12-month cycle for all that to occur.
And in terms of the blue adoption curve, we know there's a lot of interest really across the full customer base and the broader industry in our phosphorescent blue material. How steep that curve is, is really hard to say at this point, but it's our view that once we have phosphorescent blue material available, there's really no reason why someone should continue to use a fluorescent blue, given the energy efficiency benefits of our blue material, which is expected to be roughly 25% increase in energy efficiency of a display, which unlocks a lot of opportunities for the OEMs and our customers.
Are there any major risks in customer adoption of the new blue material, or is it just like any new recipe, you're kind of putting a new material in there and can move forward with that?
There shouldn't need to be any significant CapEx or there's obviously normal course adjustments to backplane design and the like, but there's not expected to need to be significant capital expenditures or otherwise to adopt blue material and replace the fluorescent material.
Oh, perfect. And recognizing you don't have a commercial emitter material yet, what are the early reads in terms of cost structure versus your more mature red and green products? Anything that is dramatically different that we should be thinking about? And then in terms of margin strategy, will you be able to price this to value to customers and kind of share in some of that to get those margins back up to maybe the prior long-term target of 70%+?
Sure, yeah. So in terms of cost, it's certainly our view, and it's gonna be more costly initially to manufacture than our current red and green material. And some of that is every time we manufacture something new, it starts off at a higher cost point, and we are able to work efficiencies out of the process. So we certainly expect to may be more efficient as we manufacture more of it and get economies of scale, but it's gonna be more costly initially to manufacture. Sorry, the second point to your question?
The second point is think about the margins-
Yes
... on the new product. Well, this is obviously creating a lot of value for customers, and the efficiency and better battery life and everything like that. So can you price accordingly to kind of push those gross margins, material gross margins, back to where they were in the past?
Yeah. So from a pricing perspective, our view is, we've made a significant investment in this blue R&D effort over a number of years. And , we believe that we need to make sure there's an appropriate return. So we believe there are premium pricing dynamics at play with our blue material relative to our current red and green. So that's a conversation that we'll be having with each of our customers. We don't have blue pricing set with any of our customers at this point, so that's a conversation that we need to have as time goes on.
Your other part of your question was on gross margins, and material gross margins had been in the high 60s or 70%, and we're currently in the low or mid-60s, let's say, for this year. We believe that we should be able to continue to improve upon that. We also feel like total gross margin is a much more meaningful way of evaluating the health of our business. Looking at material gross margin in isolation kind of disregards the royalty and licensing revenue stream. And when we sit down with customers and have conversation on, on new contracts, we're really looking at the total customer arrangement, the consideration in both the royalty and licensing agreement, as well as the material supply agreement.
Total gross margin, which is we're guiding 77%-78% this year, is really a much more useful way of assessing the health of the business and our performance.
All right, that's perfect. And then, from our understanding, Samsung agreement currently does not include blue, and the material agreements with your broader range of customers also does not yet include blue, which makes sense with no pricing set, as you said before. But with that said, how do we think about the process of securing these agreements in the quarters ahead? Is this something that would occur post-commercialization or something that is worked out prior, so you can hit the ground running once the emitter is available?
Yeah, I think the key thing from our perspective is not having the contracts for blue entered into at this point isn't slowing down any of the work that we need to do to continue to move toward commercialization and having those specs achieved next year. So we're confident that we'll have the contracts in place at the right time, and that would likely be before certainly before mass quantities are being purchased from our customers, since we and they would wanna have those contracts in place in advance of that.
Okay, so there's no huge sense of urgency at this point in time.
Correct.
Okay, perfect.
Exactly.
So shifting to the IT market. So today, we're sitting at the low single-digit % OLED penetration, and as you alluded to before, one of the large consumer electronic companies are expected to adopt OLED-
Mm
... in their tablet offering next year, and then the snowball effect that likely follows that. How are you think about the penetration rate growing over the next three-five years for that IT market?
Yeah, as you said, I mean, I think there's momentum that's starting next year with a leading consumer electronics company expected to adopt it into their OLED tablet or their tablet series. In the next few years, I think a key data point or a data point that we look at is industry growth in terms of what some of the analysts say. The CEO of LG Display, one of our major customers, recently was speaking at a conference and said that, in his view, over the next five years, there'll be 5x in terms of basically get to 10% penetration from the current 2%.
I think that speaks to some of the opportunity that we and others in the industry see in the years ahead is kind of going from roughly 2% penetration today to approximately 10% in five years.
All right, perfect. And then, how do you see UDC's revenue opportunity in IT versus smartphone and TVs over that five years? Could this be something meaningful enough to be in the same conversation in terms of revenue generation, especially when considering the opportunity from content gainers like tandem architectures, and, or will it continue to be overshadowed by units from smartphones and area from TVs?
Yeah, I think it's a big opportunity. A smartphone or an IT product, whether it be a tablet or a laptop or a monitor, certainly the size of those displays are much larger than smartphones, so that's an incremental material sales opportunity to us. So we see there as being a lot of opportunity, as well as you mentioned tandem. So the tandem structure, for those that aren't familiar, a lot of the IT applications that are expected to adopt OLED are anticipated to use what's called a tandem structure, which is basically two layers of the OLED stack. So that provides an incremental material opportunity for us because there's two layers involved, as opposed to a single layer that you would have in a current smartphone application.
Okay, and how do you think about the content gain with those additional layers? A lot of people might look at it and say, "It's 1 point 2x-
Yeah
... I'm just speaking like that." How should we think about, what's that, what's that looking like today?
Yeah, it, it's hard to put an exact number on it, whether it's 2x or something slightly less than that, because there may be a situation where each of the layers may have different thickness than a current single layer. But it's probably somewhere between 1.5 and 2x in terms of the incremental opportunity.
... Perfect. I'd like to step back a bit now and hear your thoughts on some longer-term drivers for the company. To start, as I think about the roadmap for the OLED stack, and emitters in particular, over the next few years, what opportunities get you most excited in terms of advancing the technology, building the moat, driving the value add for UDC? Maybe, maybe outside of blue commercialization.
Yeah, so we certainly have a number of things. We've got a really strong R&D organization. We have more than 300 folks in our R&D organization. They're continuously innovating new materials and new technologies. We have a printing approach, OVJP, Organic Vapor Jet Printing, that we've been developing internally, so that's clearly something we continue to invest in from an R&D perspective and see a lot of promise in. And that's really focusing on addressing large area demand, large area panels, like television-sized panels, and being able to print that using a red, green, and blue side-by-side architecture, similar to the way a smartphone is architected today.
We also have some next generation plasmonic PHOLED platforms that we've developed, which will improve the energy efficiency of a display, even beyond our current emitter technology. So there's a number of things that we're continuing to work on and develop that we believe will continue to fuel the industry in the years ahead.
Perfect. Now, thinking about content per device on a grams basis, excluding emitters such as foldable and tandem, which I think are a little bit well understood today, do you foresee any meaningful changes coming down the line that would alter the amount of average emitter material in a device? and whether it come from additional layers or emitter concentrations drive greater performance or, on the other side, a potential step function efficiency gains, such as multi-model glass that we saw a few years ago.
There's nothing terribly specific that we're monitoring. I mean, we look at... We obviously keep our eye on certain yield improvements that our customer is able to make in their manufacturing processes. But we're not anticipating that there's a significant change in the concentration or quantities of our material, in a display.
All right, perfect. And then from a competitive perspective, have there been any changes in the past 6, 12 months that have altered your positioning at all or anything that keeps you up at night there, including any patent expirations, medium term or new technologies that we should be thinking about to monitor?
Yeah. Nothing that's keeping us up. , we have a really strong position, both in terms of our patent portfolio, as well as the high quality of the materials that we produce. We have a really strong relationship with our customers. We obviously keep our eye on the landscape. We're not unaware of all the other technologies that may be out there, but there's none that we believe are truly competitive to OLED technology. And certainly, our emitters and our technologies are very relevant in the OLED space.
Okay. Maybe thinking through the IP side of things, how do you approach your defense there? How does UDC go about defending that broad-based IP portfolio, when thinking about just the phosphorescent side in particular?
Yeah, so we, We're really in a continuous innovation cycle, so keeping our IP position strong is one of the key things from a defense perspective, is making sure that we're continuing to innovate. We're not sitting back and living off of the patents of the past, but we're really looking forward and continuing to invent and, and keep a strong competitive position. We thankfully have not to date, had to litigate anything, but we do defend our IP and, and keep a really strong position in that regard.
All right, perfect. So shifting to margins for a moment, and you mentioned this before, the material gross margins historically targeted 70, 75, now down to that mid-60s. So understanding the rising costs and limited availability to pass them along, given the long-term agreements, along with the Shannon underutilization, is there any structural reason that they cannot approach that target range in the next few years, or have they officially reset? And if that's the case what gives you confidence that they maintain the levels from here? Understanding blue comes online, you get a little bit of structure from that, but maybe more on a like-for-like basis.
Yeah. So I think kind of back to total gross margin, I think is a much more meaningful way of looking at the health of the business. , we've guided 77%-78% total gross margin this year. And I think there's a number of factors at play as it relates to gross margin in the years ahead. One is we have volume pricing dynamics at play with each of our customers, where the more quantity they purchase of our material, the better price per unit they secure. We also have certain cost pressures, whether that be raw material inputs or other inflationary items. So, those are kind of the headwinds. From a tailwind perspective we continue to get more efficient.
The more we manufacture of a material, the better our manufacturing process gets, the less costly it is. We also, as you mentioned, have a key capability in our Shannon site, which is essentially a fixed cost at this point, that we'll be able to scale and grow without needing to add significant additional cost to that site. So there's a number of things that we're managing from a gross margin perspective, but, being at 77%-78%, which is relatively in the ballpark of where we've been on a long-term basis in terms of total gross margin is a, is a good place to be.
Perfect. And you mentioned Shannon as well. So how does that cost structure compare to the current manufacturing footprint at scale, once we've worked through this underutilization? And you've spoken about this site at least doubling your current capacity, when fully ramped. So how do we think about the timing of that ramp? And given the potential for robust growth today, when do you see the need to contemplate the next edition?
... Yeah, so we secured the Shannon site in 2021, early 2021, and it was really a play at looking at the industry and where we expect it to go in the years ahead, making sure that we have capacity available to meet that demand. It is. We continue to bring it online, even though some of the macro factors kind of came into play over the last 12-18 months. And having that site as a capability and as part of our network is really critical to where we see the industry and ourselves going in the years ahead. That said, it is currently underutilized, and we've been recognizing somewhere between $1 million and $1.5 million a month of expense that relates to that underutilization.
We're being really disciplined about the next phases of expansion there in Shannon. We have a significant portion of the site that is not currently being used whatsoever. And as we look at deploying additional phases, that'll be through the lens of where the industry is going, where our volumes are expected to go, and how we see Shannon fitting into the broader network that we have with our partner, PPG.
Right. And how do you think about that underutilization that you have at Shannon right now? How does that roll off over the coming 12, 18, 24 months?
Yeah, hard to put an exact number to it other than that to say we have roughly 40-50 people on site there. We have the capability that we have already in place, so we'll be able to really manufacture material out of there without any, ... minimal, other than raw materials and those types of things. There shouldn't need to be any overhead increases to really continue to use that site to a much greater degree than it is today. So there's gonna be a benefit in the years ahead, but I'm not- I can't give you an exact target of, is it X% increase in volumes that would drive some of that to come out, other than you don't really have any incremental overhead costs for additional volumes as we continue to grow.
Okay, and are there any optimizations at that facility that make it better at producing one material or another, or is it better to produce blended there or just blue? Kinda how do we think about the, what it will be filled with, I guess?
Yeah. So we currently have green manufacturing capability there. We're in the process of setting up blue manufacturing there as well, and ultimately red. So we envision ultimately using the site really for all three colors.
Mm-hmm.
But we started out at green and moving to blue. We think that Shannon will be the main site for blue manufacturing. We'll have likely a secondary site in the U.S., as an additional source of supply, but Shannon is gonna be our main location for blue manufacturing.
All right. Perfect. , well, well, thinking about this topic of leverage and margins, how do you see OpEx spend tracking relative to revenue growth over time? And given the gross margin color that you've offered, how do you think about UDC's leverage and potential operating margins, maybe three, five years out?
Yeah. So, kind of taking the components of, of operating expenses bit by bit. From an R&D perspective we sit down as we go through our annual planning process and have a conversation on what can we do with what we have, and what can we do with more? So it's really about: how do we continue to fuel the innovation of the company? The last thing we want to do is be overly cost conscious in R&D, and that be at the expense of, of innovation. So we're continuing to invest in R&D, but make sure that we're doing it with the right view of what the opportunities might be.
SG&A, we have a relatively lean SG&A organization, and we shouldn't need to grow sg&a meaningfully as we grow in the years ahead. It should be relatively modest growth in SG&A. And from an overall margin, I'm not here giving a long-term target today, but we're obviously managing all the elements of the cost structure to make sure that they're right size relative to the business and where we see ourselves going in the years ahead.
All right, that makes sense. And then as we think through R&D, obviously, a couple big components you're working on now with blue and OVJP. Once those come to market, is there any reason there should be a step down in R&D, or as new emitter materials and other maybe new projects coming online will keep that kind of ramping higher?
Yeah. Once we bring blue to market, there's certainly gonna need to be continued innovation in blue, right? There's always next-generation materials we're developing across red, green, and blue.
Mm-hmm.
So I wouldn't expect to step down in R&D expense. There may be some portion of the R&D organization that can be pivoted and repurposed to other efforts and other R&D projects, but there's gonna need to be continued innovation in blue as there is in red and green.
Okay, that makes sense. So switching to OVJP, when looking at the more interesting opportunities for the company, this is certainly one of them. And last quarter, you highlighted that you have fully printed the RGB side-by-side phosphorescent stack at similar performance to vacuum deposition. So where does this put you relative to expectations 12 months ago, and how should we be thinking about the path to commercialization from here? Any milestones investors can look to, timelines, and when partnerships begin to solidify?
Yep. So we've made a lot of, and have routinely announced over the last few years, continued innovation and improvements in OVJP and milestones there. We continue to move along the path that we had seen ourselves moving along over the last few years. And that is alongside, we set up a subsidiary in California back in 2020 with some equipment industry veterans, who have come in and really helped us continue to advance the R&D efforts there. In terms of the path to commercialization, we're still a few years off. There's still more work to do in terms of scaling that manufacturing to larger generation sizes, and also having conversations with customers and others in the industry about how we might be able to partner.
But we're still a few years off from having it being a commercially viable system at this point.
Got you. Are there public milestones that we can look toward to see the progress that's being made as we work towards commercialization over the next couple of years or a few years?
I think we will certainly share on our quarterly updates as much as we can about some of the progress that we're making.
Mm-hmm.
And then we're also simultaneously having customers and others in the industry have conversations with us on ways that we might be able to collaborate. So we'll see how some of those might come about.
Great. And what does this opportunity look like for you longer term? How would commercialization of this process expand that opportunity for the OLED industry and for Universal Display? And maybe how should we think about the revenue opportunity on the equipment side relative to the material sales it would enable?
... Yeah. So I think the key opportunity that we see is enabling OLED TV adoption in a much greater degree. So currently, OLED TVs are roughly 2%-3% penetrated in terms of the global TV market. We see that as being a significant opportunity for OVJP to help increase that penetration rate, because the cost of manufacturing should be less with an OVJP system, as opposed to the current technologies that are used for TV manufacturing. As well as it being a red, green, and blue side-by-side approach, which is different than the current TV architectures that are in place at our customers. The key opportunity for us is that enabling a material sales opportunity, right?
If we can increase the penetration rate meaningfully, the size of a television display is obviously much greater than a smartphone or an IT product. There's more material of ours that's needed in those in a TV than another, another display technology. That's a huge material, sales opportunity for us, and so this is really: how do we increase the adoption rate of OLED TV, the penetration rate of OLED TVs, therefore fueling, a material sales opportunity for us?
All right, perfect. And then, how about on that equipment side? I assume you're not gonna get into the making equipment business.
That's not the plan at this point.
How do you think about partnerships, licensing? Is there any thought into how you could monetize that side of the business?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little premature to select any one route, but it could be a licensing model, it could be some sort of joint venture, it could be us potentially other ways to partner with customers or others on OVJP. So it's either licensing, royalty, sale of the equipment otherwise, that we could see as being potential paths we may go down.
All right, so OVJP obviously would open a much larger opportunity for you guys with TVs. It's low-level penetration today. Are there any other paths to opening that TV market for you? Do you see any type of technologies out there that are kind of interesting, or is it kind of OVJP, the next thing that takes us there?
Yeah, I think the price point has continued to come down in terms of OLED TVs, so I think that they're becoming much more in reach of consumers. And I think if you're walking into a consumer electronics store, you're in the market for a tv the price point between an LCD or other technology and an OLED is much narrower than it was previously. So the value proposition is clearer in an OLED TV. It's a premium display. The true blacks, the other benefits of the technology relative to LCD and other approaches. So we see that as being something.
There's also other approaches that are being developed from an equipment manufacturing perspective that are still in R&D as well, that we believe should additionally fuel some adoption.
All right. That's perfect. I want to pause here for a moment, just in case there are any questions. Looks like we are good. Okay, so as we look at all these varying dynamics and UDC's story over the next three to five years, is a long-term model anything you would contemplate? Just to give us better insight into the long-term vision, it would seem that UDC is kind of perfectly suited for that type of model.
Yeah, it's something we do talk about. , not here to commit to it today, but it's something that we're-
Sure.
... we're in the process of evaluating. I mean, I think we know that there would be benefit to others. The industry is also still fairly young, right, in terms of the additional growth. So there's there would be pros and cons we would need to weigh in that, but it's something that we're in the process of thinking about.
Perfect. And historically, the line has been to look towards glass area expansion, as the indicator of UDC's long-term revenue trajectory. But given all the moving parts within the model and underutilization of the currently installed capacity today, are there different dynamics that we should be looking to in order to inform the long-term vision for earnings power?
Yeah, I think there's a number of different things to think about. Panel area is certainly the primary way that we look at it in terms of the size, the square meters of displays that are sold using OLEDs. There's also a number of other factors: one, blue, or the incremental revenue opportunity that blue brings to the table. As well as the tandem structure approach that we talked about earlier for IT, and , that being an additional material opportunity for us. So there's a number of different factors, but the primary way continues to be looking at panel area demand as the key element.
Okay, perfect. So I'd like to touch on accounting for a second. It's a topic that seems to have plagued UDC for a bit-
Right
... ever since the ASC 606 transition. So under your new Samsung agreement, you mentioned revenues will be better aligned to cash received, which is a dynamic that seems to be clearly evidenced over the first two quarters of the year. So are there any more abnormal accounting dynamics that we should be thinking through next year, or have these large volatility drivers kind of a thing of the past now?
Yeah, so the revenue model is exactly the same, in the current contract with Samsung and our other customers, as it was in, in prior agreements, so that's unchanged since we adopted 606 a number of years ago. So really, the key difference is the cash collection, as you mentioned, where we have just a fundamentally different payment structure in the new contract with Samsung than we had in the prior, and that's driving, a lesser impact of deferred revenue in the, in the earlier years of the contract.
Okay, so nothing strange going on next year to really account for, no big changes?
Correct.
Perfect. All right, so when I think about today's evolving geopolitical landscape and inventory concerns across virtually the entire industry, can you offer some insight into your conversations with customers around supply assurance and a potential buffer stock build? Particularly as last quarter, we saw revenues outside your big three at record levels. So wondering if there's anything we should be concerned about there.
Yeah, so nothing in particular. I mean, our customers each take a different approach and philosophy to their own inventory management strategy. Some tend to hold a larger quantity of our material on hand, others tend to be a little more just in time. So it really just depends. and there tends to be some lumpy ordering patterns from some of our customers as well. So it really just depends on each individual customer, how they approach their own inventory management strategy, and we've not seen any fundamental shift one way or another in recent periods in that regard.
... Okay. How about thinking just longer term emitter dollar content per device? Have you seen changes in customer purchasing patterns in today's inflationary environment as it relates just to willingness to, to move to new materials? Maybe put another way, are we seeing any more frugality from customers in their emitter choices, perhaps opting to remain on, on older recipes longer to reduce material costs?
Yeah, I think a key thing to highlight in that regard is our material content is a relatively small component of the bill of materials of a display. And I think our customers are primarily looking for performance, right? And they're looking for the quality of the materials that they get and what they-- the performance of that material is. Not to say cost is not a factor at all, but I don't think that... We have not seen situations where they're using older material because of a cost reason. I think they're principally looking for what is the best performing material that they can receive to meet their customers' expectations in terms of the OEMs.
Okay. So then, longer term, if I'm thinking about ASPs, is it, is it fair to think about them almost tracking flat over time as you, you continue to work within the volume pricing stack, so customers continue to come out with new recipes, new specs, you continue to move up that, then sell volume and continue? Or is there any reason to think that ASPs maybe start trending down over time or, or anything different?
Yeah. So the trend down would only be due to volume pricing dynamics, not due to other factors like you mentioned are people using older material to secure a better price? I think it really would be more a matter of our our customers, buying in much greater quantities because OLED adoption is increasing, and therefore, is there a better ASP that they're securing or a lower ASP that we're receiving from that transaction? That would be the one dynamic that would be at play, and clearly, we expect the industry to grow. We want the industry to grow. We will grow along with it. And is there some sort of modest ASP hit along with that? Potentially. But, it's really about where we see the industry growing and, on our growth prospects as well.
All right. Well, that's perfect. I'll just cede the floor to you then, if you have any closing comments or any areas you'd like to highlight that we have may have missed during our conversation.
Yeah. So really, thank you, Matt, and Evercore, for having us today. It's really great to be here. , we clearly see a lot of opportunity for ourselves in the years ahead with OLED adoption continuing to increase across a wide variety of displays. Certainly, our bringing to market a commercial blue system, which we expect next year, as well as a number of other things in terms of next-generation technologies that our team's developing. So we're very excited about the future and glad to be here. So thank you.
Perfect. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us. It was lovely. Thank you.
Thank you.