Universal Display Corporation (OLED) Earnings Call Transcript
August 12, 2026
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the 29th Oppenheimer Annual Technology, Internet and Communications Conference. Our next session is going to be a fireside chat with the President and CEO of Universal Display Corp., Steve Abramson. Thanks for being with us today. Welcome.
Thank you, Martin. Before I start, before we start, I'm supposed to say this. I may make some forward-looking statements in my remarks today. Our actual results may differ from those forward-looking statements, and we encourage anyone investing in the company to review our filings with the SEC. We pay our lawyers a lot of money to make sure I say that. So I've said that and I checked that box. Back to you, Martin.
Thanks, Steve. I'd like to begin the question on a more general industry one. So the industry is sending 2 very different signals right now. The panel makers are committing billions to new capacity, while the smartphone demand forecast softens on rising component costs. When you see capacity investments accelerating into a weaker consumer backdrop, what does that tell you about how your customers view the next few years?
That's a good question. And I think part of it is we could hold 2 almost contradictory thoughts in our heads at the same time, short term and long term. I think it reinforces the difference between what's happening today. And because as an industry, we need to plan for the future where the industry sees opportunities in the coming years. And smartphone demand has clearly become more cautious, driven in part by higher component costs. But the investments that we're seeing now are multibillion, multiyear commitments to grow the OLED industry. And those decisions aren't based on a couple of quarters of demand. What it tells us is that our customers continue to believe OLED adoption has a long runway ahead. I mean it's only been 15 years. Look back 15 years, OLED had virtually no presence in smartphones. It is with a $1 billion industry, you're being a little heavy on that one. Today, OLED penetration of smartphones is around 65%. The industry is over $50 billion industry, and this shows how significantly adoption can evolve over time. And frankly, from an OLED industry, we believe we're still in the early innings in several other markets, smartphone being the first one, but OLED penetration in IT remains relatively low, about 5%. There's still significant opportunity across notebooks, laptops and monitors as well as automotive, which is roughly 1% of the market today. We have smart watches, we have TVs. And the new Gen 8.6 capacity is being built because panel makers believe OLED presence in those markets, particularly, I think, in IT will be meaningfully larger in the future than it is today. So while the smartphone market is having some softness right now for a number of reasons, the capacity investments, we believe, are really a vote of confidence in the long-term growth of OLEDs.
Next question is also on the display supply chain. When we see memory prices putting pressure on everyone, are you seeing mainly bill of material pressure alter the panel specification or remaining on the unit forecast at the mid- to lower end?
So the memory price issue is also one of the near-term softness. And on pricing pressures, you've known us for a while, this industry is always dealing with various forms of pricing pressure. It's always give me more for less. That's not unusual. But we haven't seen anything from our perspective out of the ordinary from a pricing standpoint. Our royalty and licensing structure, together with our long-term agreements helps provide our company a degree of stability even if the broader environment will fluctuate. But what we have seen is primarily an impact on unit demand, particularly in the mid-range and entry-level smartphone segments where pricing pressures are more sensitive. And higher memory and component costs can also affect affordability and purchasing decisions. And that seems to be -- in these early terms, that seems to be where we've seen the most noticeable impact. And as you know, beyond that, we generally don't comment on specific customer product decisions or road maps.
In your most recent earnings, you have framed the second half of '26 as stronger than the first half, supported by product cycles. When you stress test that view, what gives you the most conviction? And what is the bear case for the recovery slipping into 2027?
Well, I'll start and hope that the recovery doesn't slip, but we'll get to that in a minute. Historically, in our industry, the second half of the year has tended to be stronger than the first half. And we entered this year expecting that pattern to hold. You have a major OEM product launches, new smartphone introductions, expanding OLED IT deployments and also the benefit of holiday-related consumer electronic spending in the second half of the year. So that's traditionally a seasonality approach. What gives us confidence is that, as I mentioned, a number of those product and adoption cycles are naturally weighted towards the second half of the year. It looks like there may be some exciting products coming out. And we also expect revenue growth across customer segments compared to the first half. The bear case, well, it doesn't happen. Product launches may not happen or perform as expected. They may get delayed. Consumer demand may get softer for longer or the macro uncertainty could weigh on spending. On the other side, the bull case would be those things don't happen, but product launches are better than expected. Demand improves, the macro is better, the upside could be greater than the amount we're currently forecasting. It's -- let us -- in some respects, the industry mantra is hope for the best, plan for the worst and see how it plays out. It's uncertain times right now.
Yes, that's right. So we're seeing AI driving good demand across large portion of the semiconductor ecosystem. What impact, if any, do you think AI ultimately has on the OLED demand and innovation?
AI affects us in a number of areas. One is you need -- AI requires more energy. OLEDs are power efficient. UDC OLEDs phosphorescence are energy efficient. So that's a really good thing for us. And so AI is creating many opportunities across many parts of the technology ecosystem. I mean we're visual people. We deal with our eyes. That's how we absorb information and displays are continuing to be a part of that story. Its AI is accelerating that story and users are going to interface more through their screens, be them smartphones, tablets, monitors and the like. The power efficiency, we see all these issues about building big data centers for the macro AI stuff. Well, when it's at the edge in your hand, power efficiency is also really important, and that aligns really well with our technology road map for the last 3 decades, we are the power efficiency company. We're also leveraging AI internally. Now everybody is using it to try to get your facilities more efficient. That's not what I'm talking about right now. We've always been trying to use new technology tools to develop our materials faster, better and smarter. So about a decade ago, we started investing a little bit in the quantitative aspects, AI, machine learning. We now have a strong team internally working on using AI/ML techniques together with our experimental team to invent new materials quicker. And we've been able to do this over a decade. So this isn't something that we've just started doing and getting the computer scientists to talk to the experimentalists and make sure you have a virtuous cycle of invention is really important. And we've been able to do that. And this is potentially to accelerate innovation across our technology pipeline, both in OLEDs and we are the OLED company right now. We are focused on OLED, but this is such a powerful engine. We're starting to look at and plant some seeds in other aspects of organic electronics to see how this model may be able to apply.
Got it. I want to switch topic to capacity and overall the broader secular growth for IT. So newer fabs typically create a surge of qualification, initial material loading before ramping into a full production as we see the new Gen 8 lines ramps up through 2027. What utilization or design win signals would tell you that IT adoption curve is tracking ahead of or behind smartphones?
That's a good question. Let me take a couple of pieces of that. The -- back when we started in the smartphone world, there was really one manufacturer in a small ecosystem. So you did -- and not that much experience. So you did see that initial material loading qualification, then you actually saw a little drop before you started the production ramp. I think the industry has evolved from that a little bit. So I think that today is a much broader and a much mature ecosystem, multiple panel makers investing in OLEDs, multiple OEMs launching products. The cycle of the products are going to be different and evolve over time. There's established supply chains and also a wide range of successful OLED products that didn't really exist. So when you're looking at it, Samsung and BOE recently began mass production at their Gen 8.6 facilities, Visionox and China Star, CSOT, however you want to describe them, are continuing to advance their greenfield labs. LG Display and Samsung are also expanding their Gen 6 capacity. So the industry has committed more than $20 billion towards expanding OLED capacity. What are we going to look for? More products sooner. I mean, as a short-form version. We expect to see broader OLED adoption because you now have the capacity in place across notebooks, tablets and monitors, along with the OEMs expanding OLEDs across product portfolios. And we've been working with our customers on some of the technology designs for these new products. So it's not -- we're doing it in concert or tandem with the building of the fabs. And also nowadays, consumers are using these devices more. They're using bigger models to use for streaming video to watch a content and also using their notebooks or tablets as well as their phones for business as well as for pleasure. But people want the bigger screens, whether it's a foldable screen or an IT screen or a tablet, the bigger screens are better, enables you to get your content better. I mean, I want to talk about my grandchildren, but my grandchildren like looking at the cartoons on the tablet better than on the smartphone. But you like the bigger screen. So I think that's an important and it can provide a premium media experience because OLEDs are well positioned. It delivers exceptional image quality, fast response time, deep blacks, power efficiency, wide viewing angles and as manufacturing economics improve, the combination of performance, user experience and economics, we believe, will help drive broader OLED adoption across all of IT. So we're looking forward to seeing these new products ramping into the future.
You talked about industry's evolution has opened up multiple pathways to commercialize phosphorescent blue. And what are you -- and that Universal Display are broadening their program in response. So what's changed here? Is it in customers' architecture, material science or maybe both to move blue from a single development track to several parallel ones?
It's a good question, Martin. And I think in some respects, it's all of the above. As part of the industry maturity, we've mentioned it's grown to a $50 billion industry with multiple manufacturers, multiple products. And in the early days, you provide a new material with better efficiency, acceptable lifetime and that worked into the market. But as the industry is evolving, the issues of color point, lifetime is becoming more important. Cost effectiveness is also more important. So the opportunity is more multidimensional than it was a few years ago. Because there's more products, because there's more applications, the display architectures and performance requirements have had to evolve. So for example, watches, smartphones, IT, automotive, TVs, other applications each place different demands on efficiency, lifetime, color performance and manufacturability. Now some of them can combine, some of them can't and the different OEMs can have different ideas. We are really well positioned in this because of our relationships with our customers, we can understand what their road maps are looking like and how we need to develop our technologies to respond to those road maps with the different performance characteristics, which provide more -- a broader range of materials and device architectures to get the phosphorescent blue into the market. Because of all the things we've been talking about, the IT space growing, AI growing, the need for power efficiency, all of these are drivers towards the implementation of phosphorescent blue or blue into the marketplace, whether it's a phosphorescent blue combined with the fluorescent blue in different ways because people are looking at how to combine them to get the best possible results.
If we have phosphorescent blue that are all the performance specs you would want today, which product category do you believe will adopt it first?
That's -- well, I have my own ideas, this is really up to our customers. So what I will say is that all roads to phosphorescent blue and all roads to high-efficiency blue, we believe, go through us. But which product category, it's really up to our customers. Power efficiency is key, as we know, the ability to reduce power consumption maintaining performance is value across virtually every display category. How our customers are going to utilize that is up to them. And frankly, it is their role to describe to you what they want to use for. I don't want to get out ahead -- I don't want to get ahead of our customers. I will say we see interest across virtually every display category because efficiency matters everywhere, whether it's improving battery life in mobile products or reducing power consumption in larger displays, the benefits are broadly applicable. So we really view this as the opportunity to span the OLED ecosystem, which is why the complications of what specific technologies to use are taking some time.
I think you answered my follow-up question. Just to confirm, do you still think the power efficiency is still the top consideration when customers move to phosphorescent blue?
I think power efficiency is the top consideration. But what we're seeing in the industry as well -- is it used to be -- you may remember, we had power efficiency, color point and lifetime. And power efficiency was supreme über alles. We're now seeing in certain applications, color point is important. You've heard BT2020 and things of that nature. So combining the phosphorescent energy efficiency with the color point that fluorescence can give you is a benefit. We still sell our phosphorescent materials, that works very well. And their focus are on that with, for example, green. With blue, people are talking about combining fluorescent materials with phosphorescent materials in various ways for the lifetime issue. So that you still need the power efficiency. It's still the key, but adding additional materials into the mix is going to be helpful to get the products into the market quicker and broader products, which again is one of the reasons why it's taking a little bit more time because it's adding complexity to the device design.
Got it. We're seeing increasing discussions and real commercial use cases of phosphorescent-sensitized fluorescence, so PSF. Do you view PSF as a bridge to pull the phosphorescent adoption forward while full blue becomes ready or as a durable architecture in its own right?
Well, that's an interesting predictive question. And we are working on both of those options and any others that may come about. Our goal is to make sure that our phosphorescent materials and technology are in all of the products that are using OLEDs. And the broader the product applications can be, the better off it is for us. So we're working with PSF because we can see that has certain advantages now. We also know that if we can get pure blue phosphorescence into the scheme that it can be dropped into the devices, that, too, has a lot of value. So we are following both of those paths. And if other paths come up, we will probably follow those as well. But the combination of phosphorescence and fluorescence does seem to have certain advantages in the near term. And that does seem to have legs. On the other hand, to simplify the stack, it also would have legs. So we're following on with both of those paths.
Moving on to the competitor dynamic. A competitor in China called Summer Sprout. The company presents itself as the second global supplier to mass produce phosphorescent materials independently developed IP and named Universal Display as its principal competitor. What does your visibility into the customer qualification tell you about where the Chinese supplier actually stand? How do you think about defending your share as they scale?
Well, competition is not new for us. I mean it may appear as though it is because we're sitting here 3 decades later, and we're kind of like the sole survivor and basically supplying the market with phosphorescent materials. But if you go back into our history, we've had competition all along the way, including some big companies such as Kodak, DuPont, BASF, Merck and others. And we have built a really strong competitive moat. And this differentiates us because we've always been building our competitive moat for the long term. We have more than 3 decades in the OLED industry, deep scientific expertise, largest technology development group in the area, manufacturing know-how. We have 2 big manufacturing plants, one in America, one in Ireland, broad intellectual property, strong customer relationships and continuous innovation. We're continuing to invest in our technology pipeline. We still have the best-in-class. We'll continue to have best-in-class materials across the board remain focused on advancing and protecting our intellectual property. So we believe these strengths will position us to maintain our commanding market position for the foreseeable future. We're also focused -- our customers are principally in Korea -- principally are in Korea and China. And so we're continuing to expand our global and local infrastructure. In China, for example, we opened up our Chengdu Technology Innovation Center to further strengthen customer collaboration. And I was out there in early June when we did the grand opening, and it was a very cool Chinese type opening. They did -- this means they do lion dance, and I gave the lion money and drum beating to come up and the speeches. And the facility is a really nice facility. That's our third facility. Our first technology innovation facility was in Korea, which we've expanded a few times. Then we set one up in Hong Kong, and now we have one in Chengdu. So we are really trying to get closer to our customers to ensure that we can provide the local support that they need as well as the broad support for their international export markets and the like. And so when our customers look at us because we've been working with a number of these customers for decades -- I don't think we've ever lost a customer -- they're evaluating not only today's materials, but also tomorrow's technology road map. They look at us and they see somebody who's not only providing best-in-class materials today, but also working on providing best-in-class materials for the future, whether it's blue, PSF, other next-generation OLED innovations. And we believe that's a virtuous combination of innovation, support, reliability and long-term partnership that will continue to differentiate us in the market, and we will be able to continue to grow our franchise.
Your earlier answer regarding application of AI, you referenced developing other organic materials. Can you maybe give us a sneak peek of what you're thinking? Are you expanding beyond phosphorescent materials?
So I want to start by saying the vast majority of our company is focused on the OLED business and growing the OLED business, and we intend to continue to grow that. However, we are planting some seeds for future growth because we're seeing the opportunities of combining machine learning and experimental science. And as I mentioned earlier, we think that's a pretty strong model. And so if we go into other -- we're looking at other areas of organic electronics, such as, for example, organic solar cells. So it's one of my favorites. I've always been interested in organic solar cells. But organic solar cells in some respects, is an inside-out OLED. It's something that maybe some of your listeners don't know when Ching Tang at Kodak invented the first OLED in the 1980s. The story is that it actually was an organic solar cell that he was doing, but he mixed the leads. So he created OLED and off went the industry. And thank you again, Ching, if you're listening because you did an amazing job in doing that. But we're looking I believe -- we believe AI machine learning has the potential to change material science, really has the potential to make new materials. Now what we are at our core is a new materials, material science company. And we've been really successful in OLEDs and phosphorescent OLEDs, and we'll continue to do that. But if we can take that model and move that a little bit into some adjacencies, that may open up planting seeds for new businesses in the future. We are -- I want to caution, we're at the seed planting level here. This is not like, oh, you're going to come up with something next year, but we have a lot of patience in UDC, and we grow for the long term, while now we grow for the short term because we want to grow our short term, but we also make sure we plant the seeds for the long term so that they will come in as well. And we think that, that's an opportunity in that area.
Makes sense. The company generates a significant amount of cash flow and maintains a very strong balance sheet. How are you thinking about capital allocation today between investment in technology, strategic opportunities and returning capital to shareholders?
So we do have a, I think, a strong cash flow, and we have a significant capital allocation philosophy that really hasn't changed much over time because it's grounded in our confidence of the long-term growth opportunities ahead of us as well as continuing to generate significant cash flow. So we apply our cash flow across 3 priorities. First, investing in organic growth and innovation in phosphorescence, I talked to you a little bit about some of the seeds that we're planting, but phosphorescent blue and other next-generation OLED technologies is our primary focus. We continue to look at and pursue any high-return strategic opportunities that may align with our long-term growth strategy. It's -- we've not been an acquisitive company, but we look. And third, returning capital to shareholders through dividends and more recently, share repurchases. So we've been -- we initiated our dividend in 2017. And we've continually increased our dividend every year. And on the share repurchase side, we announced $100 million authorization in April 2025, which was fully utilized through the first quarter of this year. And then in April of this year, 2026, we announced a -- new $400 million authorization. And we believe this authorization reflects our confidence in the long-term growth trajectory of OLED, the strength of our business and our ability to continue creating shareholder value and generating cash flow. The strength of our balance sheet and cash generation will give us the flexibility to both invest for future growth while also returning meaningful capital to shareholders.
We are getting one question from the audience. Summer Sprout has been shipping a green phosphorescent emitter in China for a few years. How does your ex-China IP differ from your IP within China? And would you defend your monopoly in phosphorescent emitters outside of China?
We believe that it's very important to defend our IP. China -- the person is asking the question, that within-China market is a little bit different than the outside of China market. So defending our IP across the board is very important. Defending the IP outside of China is a very important thing for us to be doing.
And the final question, if we sit down at the conference a year from now, what do you expect will matter most? And what is the biggest misperception about Universal Display you would like to clear?
Fair enough. I think the biggest factor is whether and when the industry transitions from today's cautious demand environment into the next phase of OLED adoption. I think the infrastructure is there, the ability is there. It's really, are consumers -- are the products going to be out there? Are consumers going to buy it? And right now, consumers are pretty cautious. So will that transition into the next phase of OLED adoption. Now the macroeconomic factors are not something that we can influence very much, but what we can do is we can control continuing to invest in innovation, make sure we continue to meet our customers' needs, meet and exceed our customers' needs and requirements and position ourselves for long-term growth. The biggest misperception is right now, I think you just asked the capital allocation question. We're a very strong company. We have generated a lot of cash. We have an extremely strong position in the OLED ecosystem. We're going to have that position for the foreseeable future. I think people are a little focused on when is blue coming. It's like, okay, when blue comes, and it will come, then our company will grow faster. But we're still continuing to grow. We grow a little bit less than the industry growth rates. When blue comes or maybe tandem, we can grow in excess of the company growth rates. But I think the overemphasis on blue, I don't think blinded, but people didn't realize how strong a company we are. And part of the capital allocation questions, I think, go to that issue.
Got it. With that, it concludes today's presentation. Thanks again, Steve, for your time and insight today. Thanks, everyone, for attending.
Thanks, Martin. It was my pleasure.
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