Steve Abramson
Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please proceed with your question
Thanks, Darice, and welcome to everyone on today's call. We hope that you are all continuing to stay safe and healthy. During this pandemic, our focus continues to be on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, customers, partners and community, safeguarding our business operations and advancing our strategic growth programs. Second quarter results were $58 million in revenues, operating loss of $1.2 million and net income was $800,000 or $0.02 per diluted share. The challenges of this pandemic continues to impact us in the second quarter as customer orders and shipments declined. While COVID-19 uncertainties will likely weigh on consumer demand in the near term, we continue to invest and further strengthen our leadership position in the OLED ecosystem and expect to emerge a stronger partner to our customers and to the OLED industry. Long term, we believe the growth path of OLED is unchanged and remains robust. For the second half of the year, customers have expressed cautious optimism. And frankly, we have seen a pickup in demand as customer orders increased in the month of July. At the same time, we believe significant uncertainties still loom over the consumer and macroeconomic environments and that near term demand visibility remains unclear. As a result of these ongoing uncertainties related to the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe it is prudent to continue to refrain from providing 2020 guidance. When visibility improves, we expect to resume providing annual guidance. Looking to the OLED industry, despite some near term macroeconomic uncertainties, we are pleased to see activity broadening with new OLED fabs and new OLED products. Yesterday, Samsung hosted its first ever virtual Galaxy unpacking event, and unveiled the Galaxy Note 20 and the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G, both with OLED screens and for the first time in the Note series, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra offers a vivid and bright dynamic AMOLED 2x display and 120 hertz refresh rates, which Samsung calls their best screen yet. The Galaxy Tab S7 Plus, which has an extra large 12.4 inch super AMOLED display with 120 hertz refresh rate. So you can take full advantage of the cloud based gaming and high definition streaming that 5G enables. The Galaxy Watch 3, a premium OLED smartwatch that has advanced health features and the Galaxy Z Fold 2, the next generation foldable OLED smartphone with enhanced refinements. The cover screen is 6.2 inches and the main screen is 7.6 inches, making them both larger than the first Galaxy phone. Samsung also announced during its earnings conference call last week that it was planning to expand its OLED presence beyond mobile phones in areas such as foldable and IT devices to prepare for the anticipated resurgence in market demand. LG Display held a ceremony two weeks ago to announce that mass production at second gen 8.4 OLED TV fab in Guangzhou, China has commenced. LG Display’s first OLED TV plant in Paju, Korea, can produce 70,000 sheets per month. And now at Guangzhou LG Display’s production capabilities almost doubled to 130,000 substrate starts per month. On the OLED TV OEM front, Vizio announced at the end of June that its first OLED TVs, 55-inch and 65-inch 4k models, will be available in the fall. Less than a week later, Xiaomi debute its first OLED TV in China, a 65-inch MASTER Series model for approximately $1,850. Moving to small medium sized panels. It has been reported that Mercedes Benz new S Class Luxury sedan, which is expected to be unveiled in September, will have for the first time an OLED infotainment system to be supplied by LG. And following up to the 2021 Escalade, it’s been reported that the upcoming Cadillac Lyriq electric crossover is expected to be equipped with a curved 33-inch widescreen OLED display. In China, BOE Technology completed construction of its third Gen-6 flexible OLED fab in Chongqing early last month. With an investment of $6.6 billion, this production facility is expected to have an installed capacity of 48,000 substrate starts per month and is slated open next year. BOE continues to broaden its portfolio of OLED applications and recently showcased a 49-inch ultrawide curved OLED display and our foldable OLED smartphone display and a 14-inch OLED notebook display with a narrow bezel at the 2020 Display Innovation China Forum and Exhibition. In mid-May, Tianma held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new Gen-6 flexible OLED fab in Xiamen. This $6.8 billion OLED fab is also expected to produce 48,000 substrate starts per month and slated to open next year. On the lightning front, at the end of June, Audi unveiled that its SQ5 SUV models will feature optional OLED tail lights. According to Audi, in addition to perfect contrast, the benefits of digital OLED are a higher level of homogeneity and minimal gap between the segments. Looking to the future, OLED is a perfect technology for executing personalized light design with a high degree of precision and extensive variability. This technology offers all sorts of opportunities for further development. On the UDC research and development front, we continue to strengthen our core competencies to further expand our market opportunities. As product specs of color, gamut, efficiency and lifetime continue to broaden, our brilliant R&D teams are continually innovating and inventing new emissive materials and technologies, including new reds, greens, yellows and hosts, to meet new customer, new applications and new product roadmap needs. On the blue front, we continue to make excellent progress and our ongoing development work for commercial phosphorescent blue emissive system. Last month, we issued an exciting announcement about the formation of OVJP Corporation to advance the commercialization of OVJP, our novel manufacturing process for maskless, solventless, dry direct printing of large area OLED panels. This wholly owned subsidiary will be based in Silicon Valley and led by Jeff Hawthorne, former CEO of Photon Dynamics. Jeff and his team will focus on the commercialization of OVJP with the initial focus on equipment scale up. OVJP R&D will continue in Ewing, New Jersey where we are currently working on printing a full color phosphorescence 4K OLED panel. During the quarter, we celebrated our 20 year partnership with PPG, our exclusive manufacturer of our proprietary universal PHOLED phosphorescent emitters. Through these two decades as OLEDs evolved from an idea to a now mainstream player in the consumer electronics market, UDC and PPG have built a successful relationship of close collaboration, as well as a wealth of manufacturing expertise and knowhow. We believe that our extraordinary partnership will continue to drive growth, incredible value for our customers and innovative solutions for the marketplace. And this week in SID Display Week, which is being held virtually this year, Dr. Julie Brown, Senior Vice President and Chief Technical Officer, was awarded the prestigious 2020 Karl Ferdinand Braun Prize by the Society of Information Display and Dr. Mike Weaver, Vice President PHOLED R&D was named a 2020 SID Fellow. The Karl Ferdinand Braun Prize was awarded to Dr. Brown for her outstanding technical achievements and contributions to the development and commercialization of phosphorescent OLED material and display technology. Dr. Mike Weaver has been named SID Fellow for his significant contributions to phosphorescent OLED technology and successful transfer to commercial practice. We congratulate Julie and Mike on the well-deserved recognition and awards for their exceptional contribution to the display industry. Also at Display Week, Samsung Display presented a paper titled, realizing deep blue emission and blue phosphorescent organic light emitting diodes, which acknowledged that the experimental blue work was performed using a phosphorescent material provided by Universal Display Corporation. On that note, let me turn the call over to Sid.