Financial

LG Display reported its financial results for Q2 2024 - with revenues reaching $4.85 billion (an increase of 42% compared to last year) and a net loss of $67 million (down from around $637 million in 2023).

LG Display benefited greatly from Apple's introduction of its 2024 iPad pro tablets, for which LGD is the main AMOLED supplier. The company is also expecting to sell a record number of iPhone AMOLED panels later this year. LGD says that the proportion of OLED products rose 10% of its total sales, reaching 52% - which means that OLED is now the company's main product line in terms of revenues.

DSCC says that the OLED materials market will reach $2.12 billion in 2024, rising 24% over 2023. The market will continue growing at a 6% CAGR until 2028, reaching about $2.7 billion. DSCC details the revenue split between single-stack, tandem and multi-stack panels, saying that materials used in tandem OLED panels will grow at a fast rate of 30% CAGR from 2024-2028. 

The leading materials makers by revenue in 2024 will be UDC, DuPont, LG Chemical and Samsung SDI, holding a market share of 51% together. DSCC says that Chinese materials makers will increase their market share in the future. 

Japan-based Hyperfluorescence materials developer Kyulux announced that Jimyeong Yu will join its executive management team, as the company's new Chief Financial Officer (CFO). 

Jimyeong Yu will take over as Kyulux’s CFO, replacing Akira Minakuchi, who passed away in September 2023. As CFO of Kyulux, Jimyeong Yu will oversee financial accounting operations including procurement activities, and as a member of the management team, will be involved in formulating and implementing future business plans.

The Zapp Group, which will celebrate its 325th anniversary in 2026 and has launched a major new investment project with the construction of a 12,000 m² production hall for precision foil at its Unna site, in Germany.

The company has come a long way in the past few centuries. Having started in the Leppe Valley of Germany as a small forging shop, Zapp is now a leading metals supplier and one of only a few suppliers in the world that can produce ultra-thin foil from stainless steel, cobalt nickel or titanium alloys. This major investment will further expand its dimensional spectrum down to thicknesses of up to 0.015 mm and widths of up to 650 mm.

A report from Korea suggests that Dowoo Insys is planning to IPO in 2025. The company will list on the Korean Exchange, and it plans to file the preliminary information and documents by the end of the summer.

Dowoo Insys was established in 2010, to develop glass products for the display industry. The company's main product is thin flexible glass covers for foldable displays - UTG glass - which it supplies to Samsung Display (its main customer). Dowoo does not produce its own glass - it buys flexible glass from Schott and then treats it in its own facilities. 

Reports from Korea suggested that Samsung Display acquired 5 patents from US-based Orthogonal, that contains the company's mask-less OLED production process. With this purchase, SDC has a path towards developing its own maskless OLED production.

Maskless OLED production is of high interest lately, as these technology could offer higher pixel aperture ratio leading to higher efficiency, brightness and lifetime and brighter OLEDs, compared to FMM-based production processes. JDI for example claims its eLEAP technology enables an 2X increase in brightness and a 3X increase in lifetime, coupled with reduced production costs.

Xi'an Manareco New Materials announced that it intends to invest around $10 million (76.4 million Yuan) in Idemitsu Kosan's China-based Idemitsu Electronic Materials. Following this investment, Manareco's stake at the company will rise to 20%. 

Xi'an Manareco says that Idemitsu plans to move most of its OLED material production to its China-based company. Manareco is a strategic material supplier to Idemitsu, and it hopes to expand its OLED intermediate business. In addition, the company is developing and supplying OLED stack materials (such as EIL, HIL, ETL and more).

Visionox is the latest company to announce a new AMOLED production line, targeting the IT display market - laptops, monitors and tablets. The company said that it will best 55 billion Yuan (around $7.6 billion USD) to build a 8.6-Gen production line in Hefei, Anhui province.

Visionox's production line will have a monthly capacity of 32,000 substrates. The company did not share any details regarding the timeline of this project, or its financing.

As OLED display makers are racing to launch IT AMOLED displays (for laptops, monitors and tablets), there has been recent reports that TCL CSoT has decided to build a 8-Gen AMOLED line, in a 63 billion Yuan (about $8.7 billion USD) investment.

TCL CSoT issued a statement that says that this report is inaccurate, and the company has not made a decision yet and does not have an investment plan.