My name is Atif Malik. I cover US semiconductors, semiconductor equipment, and communications equipment stock here at Citi. It's my pleasure to welcome Brian Millard, VP, CFO, Treasurer at Universal Display. We also have Doris Lau in the audience, a friendly neighborhood IR. I'm going to kick it off with my questions first, and then I'll ask the audience to ask their questions. If you have a question, you can raise your hand, and the mic will come to you. Welcome, Brian.
Thanks. Great to be here.
Good. Brian, to just start off, if you can just touch on where we are in terms of OLED adoption for TVs, for IT, for smartphone and markets, you know, kind of both near term into second half. You guys raised your numbers for second quarter, but the full year outlook was kept the same and also longer term.
Sure. Yeah, I think, taking each of those individually. The smartphone market currently is roughly approaching 50% penetration in terms of OLED adoption. I think what you've seen is, over the number of years, OLEDs have been adopted into the premium segment of the smartphone market and then continued to penetrate the mid-tier models. I think that's what continues to have room to continue to increase penetration rates in the mid-tier, with the lower tiers, you know, remaining LCD technologies to date. Moving to the IT market, which is really one that we see as having a lot of growth opportunity in the next few years, that IT, we broadly define as, you know, tablets, laptops, and monitors.
And, you know, there's expected to be adoption of tablets next year in terms of one of the leading consumer electronics companies expected to adopt an OLED tablet into OLED tablet series next year. So we see that as being a key growth driver, and I think a lot of folks are gonna, you know, start to follow that, and we should see additional, you know, penetration there. Currently, the IT penetration is roughly in the 2%-3% range, so there's a lot of room to grow there in terms of additional OLEDs being adopted. The TV market is one that is also roughly in the 2%-3% penetration today.
That's one that's been a little bit challenging in the last few years in terms of increasing that adoption, but it's one that we see a lot of long-term potential for OLEDs to continue to have an increased penetration in the TV market, specifically the premium TV market.
On the smartphones, are we past 50%-60% adoption on OLED for smartphones?
It's approaching 50%, so I think it's, it's right around the 50% mark at this point.
Okay. And then, kind of despite the strength in the second quarter, you guys kept the full year outlook the same. Is that due to macro, or, what are some of the puts and takes?
Yeah, so we've continued to have really consistent, you know, information coming from our field teams and our customers in terms of what the full year looks like. So, as we sat down to update guidance, for second quarter earnings, you know, we felt like we kind of had a better sense of where things were gonna go, being seven months into the year at that point, having some sense of what orders looked like for the third quarter. And felt like kind of bringing up the bottom end by $10 million made sense, just based on what we, we knew at that point in time. And I think it's really just a reflection of we've continued to have really consistent information on a total basis.
Some customers are up, some are down, for the full year, but on a total basis, in terms of the volumes we expect this year, we've continued to have consistent messaging from our customers.
Great. And just in terms of regionally, I'm curious at what you're seeing in terms of different regions, particularly China, in terms of the OLED demand.
Yeah, so our Chinese customers have been growing at, you know, a significant rate over the last few years. We have a number of customers who are growing and continuing to expand their OLED business. So, you know, our Korean customers are also growing, but the Chinese customers, the rate of growth there seems to be greater in the last few years. We know that the Chinese market has continued to adopt OLED into a number of smartphone models, and it's continued to move down and start to penetrate the mid-tier models in the Chinese market as well.
Okay. You mentioned kind of broadly, we're seeing strength in kind of display panel pricing this year, and if any of that is resulting in incremental OLED demand for you guys?
Yeah, I think from our perspective, you know, it's really based on kind of the square area of demand and sell-through. So the price that our customers are able to realize in their sales to their customers doesn't have a direct impact on us. Certainly, if they sell more material or more displays, that's beneficial to us, but we haven't seen any direct impact because of the pricing dynamics for displays that you just mentioned.
Great. And you talked about IT adoption for OLED as being a kind of a catalyst in 2024. Investors are excited about it, and, you know, Apple, you know, is expected or speculated to launch the first OLED-based iPads next year. How significant will that event be in terms of, you know, OLED adoption in tablets, and just talk more about the IT growth?
Sure. Yeah, I think, certainly, you know, Apple being a leader in the industry as they are, I think as they adopt OLED into their tablet series, you would expect that others are going to, you know, need to do so as well to remain competitive with that, just based on that's gonna be a significant, you know, milestone. There's also, you know, expected in the next few years, additional, you know, models of various notebooks and other applications that are expected to go OLED. So we think there's a lot of momentum behind it.
There's also new fabs coming online in the next few years of our customers to, you know, meet the expected demand in the IT market, which we think is also, you know, very important and needed to fuel where we see the industry growing. So all signs are pointing to a lot of adoption of OLED into the IT market in the coming years.
Okay. Just in terms of the cost of adoption of OLED in tablets, obviously the surface area is larger. Does the technology need to change from what it is for smartphone manufacturing screens when we move towards tablets?
Yeah, I think the manufacturing for tablets, so the right now we have for smartphones, we use a red, green, and blue side-by-side architecture that our customers use to produce smartphone displays. And I think that architecture is gonna be the same that will be used or expected to be used for IT applications as well. And so there's, you know, some new fabs that are coming online. You know, Samsung Display has announced a Gen 8.6 investment that they're making in an OLED fab for the IT market. And that's expected to be, you know, a red, green, and blue RGB side-by-side architecture as well.
I think there shouldn't be fundamental structural changes in the manufacturing process, but certainly as they scale that to larger gen sizes, there will be things that our customers and their equipment partners will need to sort through from an engineering perspective to make sure that, you know, that's scalable to larger gen sizes.
Good. And, Brian, the reason I asked that question is because there are reports that a tandem OLED structure may be implemented for IT devices, and that has been speculated for a long time, but phosphorescence has become dominating in terms of manufacturing. So can you just comment on, you know, the likelihood of a tandem structure and the progress that tandem structures are making against phosphorescence?
Yeah. So I guess one thing to clarify is the tandem structure uses phosphorescent materials, so it's not a different thing. But a tandem structure is, you know, expected to be adopted into a number of the IT models. And the reason for tandem structure or the use case for tandem structure, and that really is two layers, so two emissive layers in a display, is to make sure that the display, if it's used in an IT application, can have sufficient lifetime to last the lifecycle of the device. If you think about an IT application where there's a lot of, you know, white background over the course of the day, whether that's, you know, Excel or Outlook or other applications that folks are using on their, notebooks or tablets, that uses more pixels.
The pixels are on for a greater portion of the day. And so a tandem structure is, you know, thought to be needed to address the lifetime issues in certain IT applications. But those tandem applications will use our materials, so it's not a separate thing. It's really an incremental material opportunity for us because of the fact that there will be two layers in the device and two layers of our materials.
Got it. Outside IT, are there other end markets, maybe auto, where you see OLED adoption taking off?
Yeah, I think one that, you know, automotive, which I think you just mentioned, I mean, we've seen a lot of news recently of, our customers showcasing their display technology, OLED display technology for automotive applications. So... And that's both for, you know, cockpit, if you can think of it, you know, the driver console and having the entire dash be covered in a display, as well as, you know, entertainment displays in the rear of the car for passengers, being OLED. So we see a lot of, different applications. There's also been, you know, some, companies that have showcased, you know, even windows on buses, transparent OLED windows, where you could have, you know, displays or advertisements or other things.
So I think automotive is one segment, though, that's gaining, you know, a good bit of traction that, you know, we're really interested in and are monitoring. And that's also true not just for, as I mentioned, the displays in the interior of the car, but also for the tail lights of the car. A number of the, you know, more premium car makers, BMW, Audi, Mercedes, and others, have adopted OLED tail lights into some of their premium cars. And especially as you think for about the EV market, which is, you know, you know, clearly has a lot of momentum behind it, having an OLED display and OLED lighting in an EV is great because of the power benefits.
You know, an OLED display and OLED lighting would have significant power benefits relative to LCD or LED technologies, and so that will help, you know, provide longer battery life. And so that's a great use case for OLEDs in EVs and other cars.
Got it. And where do micro OLEDs play?
Yeah, so Micro OLEDs are you know use our technology use our materials, but they're really focused on AR and VR applications. So, you know, small size displays that are used for near-eye, typically near-eye applications. And so we see that as clearly a growing market, as you know there's a lot of you know interest and momentum in those devices. And we are you know it's our our material and our technology that's playing in that. Granted, the size of the display is you know much smaller than a smartphone or a tablet or a notebook, so the material sales opportunity from our perspective is certainly less, but it's you know certainly an exciting market.
Yeah. And then just moving on to the blue emitter, can you provide more color on how the development of your blue emitter is progressing, and what gives you the confidence about commercializing it next year?
Sure. So for those that aren't maybe entirely familiar with the blue, the blue material that we've been developing. So we have red and green material that we've been selling commercially, and yellow-green, which is another material. Those three that we've been commercialized and we've been selling for a number of years, decade plus. Blue phosphorescent material is something that we nor anyone else has yet commercialized. So we've been doing a lot of R&D for a number of years to bring that to market, and we believe that in 2024, we will have commercial specifications met that will enable us to, you know, introduce that to the market commercially. So a lot of. And we, you know, first announced in early 2022 that we expected in 2024 to have those commercial specs achieved.
Since then, we've really moved along the path that we had set out for ourselves. Each generation of the material that we develop and that we introduce to our customers for sampling purposes, we've seen improved performance in. Lifetime and you know, energy efficiency and color point, those are really the three things that we look at, and we've seen improvements in all of those. I think lifetime is really the last one that we're you know, continuing to work and improve upon to make sure that you know, our customers have material that meets commercial specifications and that they could introduce into one of their products.
So a lot of work to do between here and, you know, commercial launch, but we have confidence based on the progress we've made and, and where we can see ourselves going, that in 2024, those commercial specs should be achieved.
And Brian, when you talk about meeting those specifications, you know, there are those internal specifications, right? And then you're also working with customers, and you're getting feedback from them in terms of external specifications. And so for investors, should we be waiting for, like, some CapEx announcements or some capacity coming on as kind of the lead indicators in terms of when those qualifications really kind of translate into a ramp for you guys?
Sure. So we, I guess first, there shouldn't need to be significant CapEx at our customers, in order to adopt the phosphorescent blue material when we bring it to market. There should be, you know, slight modifications that are fairly normal, of course, they should need to make, but there shouldn't need to be significant, you know, capital expenditures like, you know, a new fab. That's not what we're talking. It's really just, you know, normal course modifications that they would need to make. And I think that, you know, we've been disclosing, you know, in our quarterly reports in the last two quarters, the amount of blue development material that we've been selling.
So we sold $2.4 million of development material in the second quarter, which isn't, you know, the hugest number, but I think it's a sign because prior to that, we had sold $300,000 in Q1 and $300,000 in all of last year. And so clearly, it's moving. You know, it's moving upward. It's gonna be a bit variable between here and commercial launch, so it's not gonna be $2.4 flat or $2.4 up necessarily quarterly between here and launching it commercially. But the size of the number that we had in Q2, I think is evidence of the progress that we're making, and we'll be, you know, providing updates quarterly going forward on, you know, how much blue development material we are selling.
I think that's something to look for. There's also some contracting milestones to keep an eye out for because we need to enter into contracts with our customers for blue. But in terms of, you know, launching it into a device or a display, that's probably for our customers to speak to more than it is for us. But I think the key point for investors and those following the company is that we're making good progress. We have more work to do, but we can see that we're on the right path to have commercial specs achieved next year.
Okay. In terms of those contracts, is the blue already part of those contracts when we look at your ABC customers, like you disclose in your filings, or will that be incremental to those contracts?
We don't have any material pricing for blue set with any of our customers, so we need to have conversations with each of them on what the pricing needs to be from a material supply perspective. All of our customers, except for Samsung, have a license to blue through their IP, their license agreements, so we don't have-- For Samsung, they would need an incremental license to the material as well to be able to incorporate it.
Okay. And with respect to your own manufacturing, I know you guys have been expanding manufacturing last year in Shannon, Ireland. Can you update us where you stand in terms of getting your manufacturing ready for production and of blue?
So we, as Atif mentioned, we secured in 2021 a site in Ireland to increase our manufacturing footprint, and that was really to meet the demand that we saw in the industry in the years ahead and make sure that we had sufficient supply in our network. So that site is a great capability. It's a very large site. It's at, you know, 16 acres, a number of buildings. We brought on an initial phase of that site in the middle of last year, in the middle of 2022, and we're currently manufacturing green material there. We will have the ability to manufacture blue material there as well, and ultimately red. So we're planning for it to be, you know, manufacturing all colors at our Shannon site.
It's a great asset to our network, but it is currently underutilized because of the fact that by bringing Shannon on at its full ramp, once we brought on all the, you know, phases of CapEx there, we will have doubled our manufacturing capacity. But we're being very disciplined about how we bring additional phases on. But currently, there is some underutilization because our volumes have been relatively flat, the last few years. But we've nonetheless continued to bring on this capacity, and we view it as having this capacity online as part of our network is, you know, much more of an asset than a detriment.
So we haven't wanted to slow down any of those efforts, even though there has been, you know, certain macro factors, you know, in the near term that have, you know, slowed down some of the demand.
... Great. And then in terms of sizing the blue opportunity, I believe, you have previously discussed a 2-to-1 ratio of green and red material consumption in smartphones. What are your expectations for blue material consumption compared to red and green?
So, as you said, the ratio of green to red is 2 to 1. We expect the ratio, the quantities of blue in a device to be very similar to green. So if you think of a future, you know, smartphone display that has our blue material incorporated in it, you'd have two blue, two green, one red, is the rough ratio that we'd be thinking. So it should be very similar to the green, the green quantities in the display. Pricing obviously is the, the question mark, since we haven't yet negotiated pricing with our customers.
In terms of devices, it will make sense that blue should be adopted across smartphones, tablets, maybe in TVs at the same time because of the value proposition, or you see, you know, a different order in terms of device adoption?
We believe there's a use case in all OLED displays. You know, it's our view that once phosphorescent blue is commercially available and has commercial specifications achieved, there really shouldn't be a reason why someone would want to continue to use a fluorescent blue approach at that point. Ultimately, we think it has broad application across all OLED displays. There will certainly be an adoption curve, and, you know, hard to say exactly right now which application goes first. That's really for, you know, our customers to determine once we have the commercial specs achieved, how they want to take that and, you know, bring it into their product portfolios.
Got it. And you guys always work closely with the host providers. Will the host system be part of the blue emitter product, or will that be separate?
So we have developed host material of our own, that's, you know, our intellectual property. We've been providing some development quantities of hosts. So that $2.4 million that I referenced in the second quarter also includes some host sales of development material that we've had to our customers. So we are, you know, planning to bring a host solution to the market. I think the host market generally tends to be a little more commoditized, you know, than the emitter business. So we're going in, you know, aware of the fact that there, you know, are likely to be more competitors there than would be in the emitter side. But we are bringing a host solution to the table that we think is, you know, very compelling for our customers.
Understand. Let me pause here and see if there are any questions in the audience.
Hi. You, you talked about the penetration rate across different markets, 50% in phones, 2%-3% IT, 2%-3% in TV. Where do you see that going in kind of the medium 3-5-year timeline? And then ultimately, where do you see that kind of tapping out? And then in EVs, like, how should we think about the dollar content per vehicle on a go-forward basis?
Yep. So, taking the first part, in terms of, you know, the potential growth and penetration rates, I guess taking each of those individually, smartphones, I think, you know, it's additional penetration in the mid-tier. So if we're at 50% now, you know, there will always be low-end smartphones that will probably, you know, potentially never adopt OLED because the cost, you know, just doesn't make sense for that market. But I think there's additional room to grow in the mid-tier, where we've seen, you know, in the last few quarters and years, additional penetration there, but there's certainly more to go.
So I can't give you an exact percentage, but there's certainly room to grow, but it's not like we could get to 100% just because of the fact that clearly there's going to be a low end that will always exist, that will, you know, not adopt. In the IT market, you know, recently, LG Display's CEO, their, you know, our major—one of our major customers, spoke at a conference, and he said that he believes the IT market in five years can grow 5x, the current penetration. So if we're 2%-2% now, 10%, you know, in five years is his assumption.
I think the key thing about the IT market, as well as TV, to note is from our perspective, the size of those displays is larger than a smartphone and certainly larger than an AR or VR display. So, that provides an additional benefit for us because there's more of our material that would be needed in one of those devices than in a smaller display. In the TV market, you know, the last few years have been challenging. You know, our customers who are, you know, supplying OLED displays in the TV market have had challenges, you know, kind of working that through and continuing to grow their business. There is capacity in the OLED TV market, so there's room to grow without needing to add new fabs there.
I think that that's a key thing as we continue to see the price point of an OLED TV come down much more in reach from a consumer perspective. If you're in the market for a TV, you walk into your consumer electronics, you know, store, you know, yes, the LCD is going to be cheaper currently, no doubt, but if you want a premium experience, you're willing to spend a few hundred dollars more, you can get an OLED TV. We've seen that price point come down much more reasonably, you know, and closer to LCDs in recent periods. Whereas in, you know, if you rewind a few years, it was kind of in the stratosphere in terms of the price point.
So I think that price point continuing to come down, our customers continuing to gain economies of scale, and the OEMs that, you know, are introducing those displays, additionally seeing additional volumes. And there's clearly a lot of marketing, you know, force being put behind OLED TVs, so I think that it's a matter of that also working its way through and consumers continuing to see the benefits that those bring to the table. The second part of your question,
It was the dollar content.
Yeah, the dollar content in EV. I mean, hard to say right now because some of the, you know, an EV display can vary depending on, you know, how the, you know, Mini Cooper, I think just this week announced that they're gonna have an OLED display in their EV model in 2025. But it's a, you know, a circle, you know, relatively small. Whereas, if you think about Mercedes, the EQS, they have the entire dashboard covered in an OLED display. So it really just depends on how big, how many displays are in the vehicle and how those are designed.
Right, but-
I can't even put it—it's hard to put an exact dollar number to it, just based on the various use cases, and also. Yeah, there's a number of factors that would come into play. You know, what's the doping concentration, the thickness of the display, among other things. So it's hard to really quantify.
Mm-hmm. I'm curious, host material market, compare and contrast the size of that in the market and who the competitor, who are the competitors?
Yeah. So there's the question was on the host material, and who are the competitors, and just general-
Size.
size of the market. So, the quantity of host is much greater in a display than emitter. So I think the analogy we use is, if you think of a glass of chocolate milk, the milk is the host and the chocolate is the emitter, is kind of the way of thinking about it in terms of the quantities. So there's a significantly greater quantity of it, so the market is larger in terms of just sheer volumes of material that are produced of hosts. The price point is obviously less, much less than emitter, you know, given that as well. There's a number of companies, you know, principally in Asia. There's some in, you know, Korea, some in China, some in other places in Asia, that work on host business. Primarily, we have partnerships with many of them.
There's also, you know, companies in Europe that are working on hosts as well. So we participate in that ecosystem. You might have seen, you know, that we announced back in April when we acquired Merck's patent portfolio, that we were gonna, you know, be collaborating with them on some of their material development. They develop hosts themselves. So that's just an example of how we do have partnerships with folks that are, and many others, who are working on the host, to provide them access to our emitters so that they can have the benefit of using that when they're developing their host material.
Hello, Brian. I have maybe a quick question on material to royalties. I think you gave a 1.5 for the year, but I think for the last couple of quarters have been tracking a little bit below. So maybe any colors on maybe where you might end up? And also, when we look into 2024, and I know it's early because blue is not priced in yet, but any sense of how should we think about blue in terms of that ratio as well? Would it help it bring it down, and what are the impacts on margins?
Sure. So I think on the ratio of royalty and licensing to materials, yeah, 1.5 to 1 is the guide that we had given for this year. I think that, you know, some of what you've seen in terms of that being slightly less than 1.5 in the first half of the year is just customer mix. You know, we have certain customers who have different, you know, royalties to materials ratios, and so it's just been. That's played out a little differently than what we had originally expected. We still think that there's. It's gonna tick up a little bit in the second half of the year, but we need to, you know, kind of wait and see how that, how that plays out.
In terms of next year and blue contribution and how that might impact margins, it's... Well, I guess there's a number of things there. One, you know, we've said we'll have material available next year that meets commercial specifications. We've not said at what point in the year, at what volumes are we selling blue next year? How do our customers choose to introduce that? So I think there's a number of things to figure out, you know, on that end. We also don't have pricing set for blue with any of our customers, so those are conversations we need to have with each of them as we get closer to that commercial launch. The cost of manufacturing is another thing. I mean, blue is going to be, you know, initially more costly for us to manufacture.
We have a plan to bring that cost down over time, but that's another, you know, element that we'll, you know, we'll be, we'll be working through. Hard to give you an exact answer for you, but I think the key point is, you know, we're very close to having those commercial specifications achieved. We know there's a lot of interest in our customer base, you know, in our blue material, and we think that it's gonna be, you know, a real game changer for, you know, our customers and the broader market once we can, can bring that, bring it to market.
Yep. Could you just give us a sense of kind of the state of the union in terms of, just in terms of the OLED fabs out there today, in terms of the plans for the next couple of years? My understanding, and it's maybe a little bit dated, but it's mostly just, I think, Samsung, LG, and BOE, just, and especially in the China market. I guess, can you give us a sense of maybe the next couple of years, who, who's kind of bringing on capacity? Who are the, you know, maybe the top three, four players who are gonna be expanding a lot, and, and kind of what you see there?
Sure. We have... Yeah, as you noted, you know, Samsung Display, LG Display, and BOE are certainly the top three, but there are other customers of ours in China. We have China Star, Visionox, Tianma, and others who are continuing to grow their OLED business as well. I can't speak exactly to their fab plans, but all of them are growing, and they're growing their OLED business, and they continue to believe that, you know, OLED is the display technology of the future and where things are going. So we think there's a lot of, you know, potential for growth there in that market. But we have a number of customers in China, all of whom are, you know, doing quite well in their OLED business.
... And maybe just on, add on to that. Any of them just with whatever the TV Gen is, maybe Gen 10, I guess, and do any of them have meaningful Gen TV, whatever Gen is, plans?
Sure, yeah. So the in OLED TVs, there's really two, two players at this point, LG Display being the, the largest player with their White OLED approach. So that's a, a White OLED with a color filter, that they have as their, their architecture for their, their television. And then Samsung Display has the QD-OLED, which is a blue OLED with quantum dots to create the the red and green colors. So, those are the two predominant players as well as technologies. Our Chinese customers, you know, to date, have not been, you know, meaningfully stepped their toe into, into the OLED TV market at this point. But I think they're all monitoring, you know, what happens with the market. You know, is there an increase in demand?
Is there greater utilization of some of the OLED TV fabs in the coming years that exist, you know, elsewhere in the other companies? And therefore, does it make sense for them to, you know, take one of these approaches? Something we haven't talked about either, you know, Atif and I haven't yet today is, you know, we have a TV technology that we've been developing ourselves, an equipment technology, which is called OVJP or Organic Vapor Jet Printing. And what that's really focused on is having a red, green, and blue side-by-side printed OLED TV. You know, I talked just a second ago about the white OLED approach that LG Display has and the quantum dot approach that Samsung Display has.
But the approach that we're working in R&D with OVJP is how to print using a dry printing process directly onto a substrate using printheads, which will enable the same architecture of an OLED TV as you have for your smartphone, which is red, green, and blue side by side. And the reason why currently that isn't, you know, commercialized at any of our customers is, right now, they use a mask technology to produce smartphones. So they have a mask, they deposit material, and that's the method for depositing material onto smartphone-sized displays. If you scale that to, you know, much larger displays, like a TV, the masks can start to sag, and there can be an issue with the manufacturing of those at large display sizes.
So OVJP is meant to address that technological challenge through the use of these printheads. And we've had a lot of technological improvements in OVJP over the last few years. We've announced many of those at our quarterly calls. The most recent one was we were able to print using the OVJP system, all colors, all layers of an OLED display. And so that was a key, you know, milestone for us, and we continue to expand the size of the glass that we're printing on with OVJP, and also have conversations with customers and others in the industry about how we might be able to partner and move this forward to being a commercially viable system.
Brian, the OVJP is the idea that there'll be a new equipment that will be inserted in existing line that can do this step, or you'll have to, you know, introduce brand-new equipment for the full line? And what is the monetization strategy here?
Yeah, so it's probably a new line rather than a retrofit. But OVJP uses fewer process chambers than other technologies, so it would be less floor area, so to speak, that an OVJP system would need to occupy. And the monetization strategy, I mean, this could go a number of different routes. It could be some sort of joint venture, it could be a licensing model or royalty model that we would put in place. So, we're a few steps away from that since we still have more R&D to do, but, we believe that it's, you know, an interesting technology that we see as having good application for OLED TVs.
Good. The reason I ask that question is because we also hear from, like, Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron, they're working on something kind of exotic and just trying to understand if what they're doing is different from what you guys are doing or is it similar?
Yeah, so it's different. We're the only ones doing this type of approach, but as you said, there are others in the industry who are looking at... You know, there's some that are working on a photolithography approach. There's, you know, a number of other different applications that are being evaluated, but we see a lot of promise in OVJP.
Great. Then just on the capital allocation, you guys have a significant amount of cash with no debt on your balance sheet. You guys regularly raise your dividend, but I hear from investors about, you know, why not a big share repurchase?
Yeah, so we want to grow the business. I think having capital, you know, in the business to be able to fund, whether that's R&D projects that we see as being very promising, or acquisitions of patent portfolios, or even business acquisitions that we may evaluate, having the access to the capital is a priority, you know, of the company. We have, as you noted, increased our dividend annually. We aspire to continue to do that going forward. Having access to the capital, I think, provides us a lot of flexibility and options. We do evaluate buybacks, but it's just not been something that, to date we've, you know, done in a meaningful way.
Okay. Then the gross margins, with the blue emitter kind of coming next year, how should we think about the materials gross margin? And also, if you can comment on the situation with the iridium, which, last year, year before, kind of goes through some kind of a, you know, availability issues.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so iridium, I'll start with the last part. So iridium is a key raw material for some of, many of our materials. And so we have a strategic supply that we, you know, have on our balance sheet and inventory of iridium. We've been buying it at various price points. The price has gone up in the last few years, so that's been a headwind to gross margins. One thing on gross margins is, you know, one thing that I... When I joined the company, I, you know, kind of quickly noticed there was a lot of folks that were focused on material gross margins rather than total gross margins.
Total gross margins is a much more meaningful way, in my view, of evaluating the health of our business and our performance because, you know, we look at really the total value that we receive out of a customer relationship, rather than looking at one piece or another, whether that be, you know, licensing and royalties or material sales. We're looking at it in aggregate. So total gross margins this year, we've guided to 77%-78%, which is, you know, not far off where we've been historically. So while material gross margins have taken a hit in recent periods, the total gross margins are very much, you know, relatively intact compared to where they've been over a longer period of time.
We should assume at the same range for blue emitter once it gets introduced?
Yeah, on blue, blue gross margin's a little... Again, back to we don't know the price and the cost and all. There's a number of things to kind of, you know, nail down there before we can give guidance specific to that point. But, you know, we view it, we view blue as having a premium price profile relative to our red and green. So we're not viewing there as being a, you know, a negative impact as a result of blue.
Great. We're almost out of time. Thank you, Brian, for coming to the Citi Conference.
Thank you.