Earnings Labs

Universal Display Corporation (OLED)

Q1 2009 Earnings Call· Thu, May 7, 2009

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Shennel and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Universal Display Corporation First Quarter 2009 Financial Results Conference Call. (Operator instructions) On behalf of Universal Display Corporation, I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Paul Johnson.

Paul Johnson

Management

Thank you and good afternoon everybody. Thanks to those who are joining us today. With us as always are Steve Abramson, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Sid Rosenblatt, Chief Financial Officer of the Universal Display Corporation. Let me start today by reminding you that this call is the property of Universal Display. Any redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the express written consent of Universal Display is strictly prohibited. Further, as this call is being webcast live it will be made available for a period of time on Universal Display’s website, this call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the live call – webcast of the call, May 7th, 2009. All statements in this conference call that are historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Universal Display’s beliefs, expectations, hopes, or intentions regarding the future. It is important to note that these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause Universal Display’s actual results to differ from those projected. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in the company’s periodic reports filed with the SEC. Universal Display disclaims any obligation to update any of these statements. With that out of the way, I’d like to turn the call over now to Steve Abramson, President and CEO of Universal Display. Please go ahead, Steve.

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

Thank you, Paul and welcome everyone to our conference call and a review of financial results for the first quarter of 2009. I would like to wish all of our Japanese colleagues a happy Golden Week. As always, I’ll share some highlights from this quarter, as well as some thoughts on the state of the OLED industry. Sid will follow with a review of the specific financial results. We will then take your questions. We last spoke less than two months ago. So, my remarks will be relatively brief. We saw a modest increase in revenue during the quarter, approximately $2.8 million versus $2.7 million in the first quarter of 2008. Revenues are down from the last quarter of 2008, which is probably reflective of the impact of the global economic crisis. We have many reasons to continue to be optimistic about the future. Many new OLED products have been introduced already this year including an OLED Walkman from Sony and Touchscreen OLED from Samsung. The OLED display of one new product, the Cowon S9 60-Gigabit video MP3 player with touch screen was recently described on Amazon as follows, “The S9 boasts a 16 million color, 3.3-inch AMOLED display with a 480 x 272 pixel resolution. Thanks to the low-power display technology, the screen is viewable from virtually any angle. It looks great in the dark and even in direct sunlight. AMOLED turns electric signals into video 1,000 times faster than the speed of conventional LCDs, leaving no ghost images while playing motion pictures.” We are especially excited about the release in the US of the Samsung Impression cell phone available through AT&T. With a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen, this is the first OLED product to be sold to a national wireless carrier. It has received rave reviews since being introduced…

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Steve and again, thank you everyone for joining us on the call today. I will begin today with a detailed look at revenues for the first quarter of 2009. Then I will review other key financial results including net loss, operating expenses, and cash used in operating activities. We will then turn the call over to the operator for your questions. Revenues for the first quarter of 2009 totaled approximately $2.8 million compared to $2.7 million for the first quarter of 2008. Total commercial revenue during the quarter was approximately $1.4 million compared to $1.6 million for the first quarter of 2008. Commercial chemical revenues and royalties and license revenues for the quarter were $686,000 and $516,000 respectively compared to $986,000 and $570,000 respectively for the first quarter of 2008. The majority of these revenues for the first quarter of 2009 were from Samsung SMD. The decline in these revenues is mainly attributable to a decrease in material shipments to Samsung during the first quarter. These revenues also include sales of small amounts of our materials to another customer in the quarter. Chemical shipments volumes and related revenues remain difficult for us to predict on a quarter-to-quarter basis. We generated royalty revenues during the quarter under our patent license agreement with Samsung. Under that agreement, we received royalty reports within a specified period of time after the end of the quarter in which royalty-bearing products are sold by Samsung. Consequently, the royalty revenue from Samsung for the three months ended March 31st, 2009, reflects royalties for products sold by Samsung during the fourth quarter of 2008. License revenue for the first quarter of 2009 totaled $238,000 compared to $302,000 for the same period in 2008. We received these revenues under our patent license agreement with Samsung, as well…

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions) Your first question is from the line of Jim Ricchiuti with Needham & Company. Jim Ricchiuti – Needham & Company: Hi, good afternoon.

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

Hi, Jim.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Hi, Jim. Jim Ricchiuti – Needham & Company: The question first on the operating expenses. Sid, maybe this one’s for you. Are you breaking out patent cost now from R&D, is that where it had been?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

That is correct. It had been included in our R&D expenses and we decided this year to break it out separate. Jim Ricchiuti – Needham & Company: Okay. Has it been roughly at these – the $700,000 level or does it tend to vary quarter to quarter?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

It has actually been close to that for the past four to six quarters. It has been, for the past couple of years, somewhere around $3 million on an annual basis. Jim Ricchiuti – Needham & Company: Okay, that’s helpful. I have a question about the royalty reports that are generated. And the question is – I’m just wondering when you get a report from Samsung, how much information is there? Is it broken out by product line, is it broken out by geographic region?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

These reports we get are confidential, but our royalties essentially are based upon direct gross revenues that – of the AMOLED or the OLED products that they sell, but anything in the report is really confidential, but our license fees are based upon gross revenues. Jim Ricchiuti – Needham & Company: Okay. But it is possible for you – what I’m getting at, I’m just wondering if it’s possible for you to get some better sense as to how some of the products are selling based on now what we know where they are going in certain – for instance, the phone is now available here in the US.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

We – if we had the – a couple of things. Anything that we get from them through these reports will be confidential. Display Search and some of the other folks actually get more information and publish that information about the specific products and press releases. So, that is the place that we actually look to get some corroboration of the information that we get, but they get more information because I think they speak more to the marketing folks and stuff like that and get information about the specific products. To be honest, we are a technology provider and a material provider and looked at as a vendor. Jim Ricchiuti – Needham & Company: Fair enough. So, I mean it looks just based on the number of phones that we are seeing that are either in the market now or planned to be introduced, I mean the list seems to include as many as 15 to 20 different phones or portable devices. So, I guess you alluded to the fact you think the economy is having some impact on this. Is that – do you have any further color on that or is it just based on what we are hearing at a macro level, just from a lot of different manufacturers?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

– : Jim Ricchiuti – Needham & Company:

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Yes, I think we’ve said that in the past that that looks like pretty consistent. So, for this year I think if you use that number, this year a couple quarters are a little bit lumpy based upon some timing issues, but I think for this year if you use that number pretty equally for the year, it should be okay. Jim Ricchiuti – Needham & Company: Okay. That’s it from me for now. Thank you.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Jim.

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions) Your next question is from the line of Yair Reiner with Oppenheimer & Company. Yair Reiner – Oppenheimer & Company: Hi, good evening. So, most handset OEMs and other OEMs don’t really like to source any product including the display from single source. Right now, it seems like Samsung is the one provider out there who has some volume capabilities. Do you see anyone coming up and maybe filling up some slack in that business and giving OEMs out there some more confidence that there is more than one person to go to?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

You can republish reports from LGD who is increasing their OLED capacity. Chi Mei has capacity for small-area displays. So, at least those two capacities today and LG is going to increase its capacity this year and there are – Sony is talking about having small-area displays in some of its (inaudible) and they also obviously are making the 11-inch TVs and talking about additional larger sizes. So, there is more capacity today, but clearly the largest manufacturer out there is Samsung SMD. Yair Reiner – Oppenheimer & Company: Now, in terms of commercial chemical, I guess given all the new products that are out there, surprising that that didn’t grow more than it did in the first quarter. Do you have any visibility into the inventory that’s being held at your customers and are you able to know if – what the inventory levels are now compared to where they might have been three months ago?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

We really don’t have a lot of visibility into that. I mean, it – Samsung at one point was SDI – when Samsung mobile displays was really SDI, they would have a breakout on their conference calls of the AMOLED and give a little more color, but now it’s joint venture owned by Samsung Electronics and Samsung SDI and I have not seen any published reports with any visibility into any of the details. Yair Reiner – Oppenheimer & Company: Do you have any intuition about whether there was some inventory reductions on their part during the first quarter?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

I really don’t have an answer for you. I would – to be honest, I would not be surprised, but I don’t have an answer for you. Yair Reiner – Oppenheimer & Company: Okay. OpEx was down sequentially. Is that kind of the right level moving forward?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Yes, it should be. The fourth quarter number historically has been a little bit higher because you do your year-end audit and you keep the books open for a lot longer and you get everything possible in there. So, historically the fourth quarter number has been a little bit higher than the other ones. I think the number, $8.8 million to $9 million is probably a good number based upon our internal estimates and we have said that at this level, we pretty much have everybody that we need except for a few folks and we don’t tend to hire like we did last year. Yair Reiner – Oppenheimer & Company: Okay. One final question from me. Then I’ll get back into queue. Any progress on the green that’s in trials now with various AMOLED makers?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

It is still in the process. We are working with a number of customers and it’s being evaluated. It is a long process to go through, there is a lot of steps and then there is a lot of testing that is done, sampling products, getting production scale-up issues, all looked at. So, it is a long time, I think we have said in the past that we thought in the second half of this year we would be able to really know more about it and talk more about it, but it is going through the process. Yair Reiner – Oppenheimer & Company: Great. Thank you very much.

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

Thanks, Yair.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is a follow-up from Jim Ricchiuti with Needham & Company. Jim Ricchiuti – Needham & Company: Yes, I wanted to just look at the opportunity in the lighting side of the business and maybe you can give us a little bit of color on how that’s developing. If you look at the technology development line and the development chemicals line, are you seeing more interest, more revenue associated with light applications in that area?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

It is a bright spot in our future. I think that make a bad joke. On the revenue – we are seeing a lot more interest across the board on lighting, you are reading more about different companies having lighting expectations and looking at where the opportunities are, the lifetime and the CRI coordinates are getting better and better. Obviously, we signed the agreement with Konica Minolta and we are working with a number of other customers on the developmental side. We think that this year and early next year you should start to see some commercial lighting products. There is a lot more activity in that area and there is a lot more interest across the board. Jim Ricchiuti – Needham & Company: You did $2.8 million of revenue this quarter. Is lighting any kind of meaningful – is there a way for you to just let us know what percent of that $2.8 million might be from lighting?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

The DOE programs from the government are all related to lighting. So, of the almost $900,000, a lot of that has been DOE funding. We don’t specifically break out all the different contracts, but we have a number of different contracts that we are working on. And we are seeing more and more from that side and we would actually expect that to continue to grow, particularly with the administration’s push for energy-efficient solid-state lighting, we would expect this year for that to continue. But on the commercial side, there really is not commercial revenue being generated for lighting at this time. Jim Ricchiuti – Needham & Company: And then as we think about the business model developing a few years out, it’s obviously – it’s probably hard to call, but I’m wondering if you have any sense how that revenue might break out between display and lighting?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

You are correct. I mean, we have our own estimate internally. We are focusing today on the business that is generating revenue and working with our customers on the – obviously the display side for small area and working on the material systems for large-area displays because we think that’s coming. I do believe that is a number of years out before you see any significant revenues from us from the lighting side. I think you will start to see it grow, but I don’t think – we don’t anticipate significant amounts of revenue over the next two years. Jim Ricchiuti – Needham & Company: Okay. Thank you.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Jim.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. Now, I will turn the call back to management.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Again, we’d like to thank you all for participating on the call and we are available for any of your questions. Most of you know us pretty well, so please feel free to contact us directly. And with that, thank you and see you later.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.