In 2018 Merck opened an OLED technology center in Shanghai, that includes laboratories to enable device fabrication and characterization for local Chinese-based OLED customers.
It is now reported that Merck is investing $26 million to expand the OLED laboratories and build an OLED material plant in the area. The new plant will start production by the end of 2022.
French OLED microdisplay maker MicroOLED announced that it has raised €8 million by EU-based Cipio Partners and Ventech.
MicroOLED OLED microdisplayMicroOLED recently launched a new compact optical module called ActiveLook, and the company reports it is being adopted by eyewear companies such as Julbo, UVEX and others.
China's Jilin Optical and Electronic Materials is now a public company, as it starts trading on the Shanghai STAR Market (ticker 688378). The company raised 1.14 billion Yuan (US$166 million), and the IPO was 3,426 times oversubscribed.
Jilin Optical and Electronic Materials was established in 2005. The company develops and produces a range of OLED materials, including hole injection materials, hole transport materials, light-emitting layer materials and electron transport materials. In 2019 it Jilin etablished a $85 million OLED Material R&D center in China.
LG Technology Ventures (LG's venture capital investment arm) announced a strategic investment in OTI Lumionics. The investment will help OTI accelerate the adoption of its materials including its including its ConducTorr CPM solution for under display cameras.
A few weeks ago OTI announced that its latest version of ConducTorr Cathode Patterning Material (CPM) is ready for mass production and will start shipping in Q4 2020 for use in next generation mobile devices and other displays.
China-based OLED maker Visionox posted its H1 2020 financial results - with a net profit that dropped 47.3% (from H1 2019) to $13.4 million. This result was actually boosted by the sale of some assets, without which the company would have posted losses of $77 million.
Visionox revenues actually increased 4.5% to $173.8 million, but the company's profit margin was much lower as price of rigid OLED displays dropped 27% in June compared to last year. The price of flexible OLEDs was also down by 11%.
Organic-TFT backplane/emitter developer Mattrix Technologies (previously nVerPix) announced that it has received a $1.5 million investment from JSR Corporation. This second investment by JSR is the first tranche in the company's new round (which will total, hopefully, $3 million)
JSR is a strategic investor, and has also launched a joint-development project for the development of solution-based conductive inks that will be sued in Mattrix's next-generation backplane transistors.
Universal Display reported its financial results for Q2 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic continued to impact UDC, as customer orders and shipments declined. UDC reports $58 million in revenues (down from $112 million in Q1 2020 and $118 million in Q2 2020) and a net income of $800,000. Part of the reason for the revenue drop were two orders made in Q1 (worth $44 million) as safety-stock due to the trade concerns and COVID-19 uncertainties.
While the second quarter was very disappointing for UDC, the company reports that demand has picked up in July (the first month of Q3) as customer orders increased. There are still "significant uncertainties" ahead and the company will not provide any guidance until visibility improves.
Samsung reports a large increase in its profit in Q2 2020 - as the COVID 19 pandemic increases demand for memory chips, and also as a result of a one-time $950 million penalty payment from Apple following lower OLED orders.
Samsung's net profit in Q2 2020 totaled $4.67 billion (an increase of 7% from Q2 2019), while its revenues were $44.4 billion (down 6% from last year).
A consortium of researchers from three different Universities int he UK (Durham University, Newcastle University and Glasgow University) was awarded with £2 million ($2.6 million USD) towards a new project to develop new OLED emitters.
The new project aims to develop an "ultra-efficient" deep-blue OLED emitters. It is not clear whether this is a more efficient fluorescent-type emitter, or a next-generation material design.
LG Display reported its financial results for Q2 2020 - with revenues up 12% over last quarter, as the company enjoyed an increase in demand for IT panels (monitors, notebooks, tablets). But lower demand for TVs and lower utilization at its POLED fabs increased LGD's operating loss.
LG Display says it expects its Q3 revenues and operation profit to improve - as mass production of OLED TV panels in Guangzhou finally started, and the company will ship pOLED panels to Apple's iPhone 12 in the next quarter. LG maintains its 4.5-5 million OLED TV panel shipment forecast for the whole of 2020.
