Steve Abramson
Analyst · Cowen and Company. Please proceed
Thanks Darice and welcome to everyone on today's call. We hope that you and your family are staying healthy and safe during these difficult times. In these extraordinarily challenging times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been able to keep our employees safe, maintain our business operations and continue our strategic growth programs. Our primary focus remains on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, customers, partners and community.During the quarter, crisis management and business continuity plans were activated. Under our crisis management plans, we implemented measures to safeguard our employees, which includes modified work arrangements. And then facilities we are adhering to the recommendations from local and global health authorities to maintain a healthy and safe work environment.Our business continuity plans are mobilized to ensure our ability to continue our R&D programs and manufacture and ship to customers our energy efficient high performing universal solid materials.Our team is analyzing and preparing for various scenarios and fortifying our ability to adapt quickly to evolving and fluid situations. We are communicating our collaborating closely with our customers, partners and suppliers and are positioning the company for continued execution in these times of high uncertainty.Towards the end of the first quarter, as concerns about the pandemic increased and the environment deteriorated faster than anticipated, we work with our suppliers to strategically build additional inventory of our proprietary materials and engage with our customers about advancing some material purchases.Given extra ordinary efforts of our global team, which includes our Ewing headquarters, our International teams in Asia and Europe our subsidiary Adesis and our foundry partner PPG we have been able to safeguard the continuation of our business operations as a key enabler in the OLED ecosystem.In this rapidly changing environment, it is challenging to me forecast about future results. While our global supply chain remains solid and we’ve had no issues shipping materials to our customers and our customer continue to manufacture OLED panels, there are concerns about constrains in the consumer electronic supply chain due to the pandemic.From a market standpoint, near term demand visibility is unclear due to the tremendous uncertainties surrounding the consumer environment and the macroeconomic environment. In light of all of this we believe it is prudent to withdraw our 2020 guidance. When visibility improves, we expect to resume providing annual guidance.As we look ahead and we believe with the long-term growth path of OLED is unchanged and remains strong. The timing of adoption may shift due to the macro economy. Samsung and LG Display have both announced their plan to exit LCD TV panel manufacturing as they shift more of their business to OLEDs.Is the reported that some Chinese panel manufacturers will no longer invest in new LCD manufacturing tabs and also shifting more of their focus to OLED for their future. In the consumer space, OEM interest in OLEDs continues grow. New adoptees and new OLED products are materializing in the IT and TV segments and the smartphone market we are seeing a bigger push to move OLEDs beyond the premium segment.During this time we will continue to invest in our leadership position in the OLED ecosystem and expect to emerge even stronger to further enable our customers and the industry. With a robust balance sheet of approximately $640 million in cash, a lean operating model and no debt, we are continuing our R&D initiatives to help drive innovation and to capitalize on the opportunities in the market.We are also strategically increasing our headcount around the world, to meet the growing long-term needs of the company and our customers. As we shared last year, we expanded our footprint in Asia with new offices and filling application centers in Hong Kong and Korea.Hong Kong has been open for several months now, while the labs in Korea are currently in their initial phase of qualification. Our R&D teams continue to discover, develop and design new immersive materials and technologies including new reds, greens, yellows and hosts.On the blue front, we continue to make excellent progress in our ongoing development work for a commercial phosphorescent blue emissive system. We also continue to advance our work in Organic Vapor Jet Printing our novel manufacturing process to OLED TVs. As we and our customers continue to invest in the future of OLED, we're also seeing the proliferation of OLEDs continued in the consumer electronics landscape.In the smartphone market, we believe 5G will help star in placement cycle and the premium smartphone market the segment were OLED display is dominate. Moving beyond the premium market, recent OLED smartphone launches such as the Honor 30 for $425 and the Samsung Galaxy M21 for under $200 is indicative in our opinion of the move of OLED's to the mid-range and even the low end of the smartphone market.As more OLED capacity is built and ramped, we believe the proliferation of OLED's into the mid-range and low end will accelerate. In TVs while we recently launched its first OLED TV. Last year there were about 15 OLED TV makers in the world using LG Display panels. This year and additional four new OEMs Huawei, Xiaomi, Vizio and Sharp will launch OLED TV models, further broadening the landscape of OLED TV players and products.From a capacity standpoint, new OLED investments continue. It's been recently reported that China Star will invest in a second flexible OLED fab T5, which is expected to be larger than its first all OLED fab T4. Its first OLED fab is currently in expansion mode, as expected to produce 45,000 Gen-6 panels per month when fully ramped.Regarding China Star, we are pleased to announce that we signed long-term agreements with Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics, a subsidiary of TCL. Similar to our other long-term customer agreements, these are multiyear agreements that included commercial material supply agreement, and end license agreement.I would like to thank the outstanding teams of both companies that worked diligently on these agreements while managing the challenges presented by current events. With respect to OLED lighting, we continue to believe that its benefits including energy efficiency, novel and innovative form factors, beautiful natural light that best replicates sunlight, no glare and cool operating temperatures are all quite compelling for the commercial, residential and niche markets including automotive.On that note, let me turn the call over to Sid.