Universal Display Corp. (OLED)

[Fletch]

Really doing well the last few days,
Fletch
PS Look at those gaps sitting down there!

[Stock Guy777]

Oh I've been watching fletch! it's just too bad I didn't pull the trigger a month ago

[Fletch]

A double so far this year and no one cares,
Fletch

[Fletch]

Glad I'm in this one,
Fletch

[maytepper]

$OLED Oppenheimer Steps To The Sidelines On Universal Display http://www.smarteranalyst.com/2014/11/14/oppenheimer-steps-to-the-sidelines-on-universal-display/

[Cognition]

Insider buying at OLED. Story released today. GLTA.

[FreeGrass]

OLED devices for lab-on-a-chip-applications

http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news/newsid=38090.php

Smart and portable medical equipment is essential for fast and easy point-of-care and point-of-use diagnostics. Lab-on-a-chip applications in hand-held devices can help to save time for laboratory medical analysis in emergency scenarios. The combination of sub-micrometer-thick light emitting devices and photo-detectors with tunable spectral characteristics could play a key role in future sensing chips based on organic electronics.

These applications realize the excitation and detection of fluorescence or phosphorescence in a marker. Even time-resolved measurements are possible. The integration of both, OLED together with organic photodiodes into one chip could be a way to achieve low-cost personal diagnostics outside the laboratory.

At IDW 2014 Fraunhofer FEP presents two different OLED-device concepts: one emitting in the near UV and another one in the green spectral range which both could be integrated to sensor applications.

These two exemplary OLED developments can be used for biomedical and biotechnical sensing in lab-on-chip applications. Near ultra-violet emission from an OLED is demonstrated for bottom- as well as from top-emitting device architectures. Furthermore, the scientists from Fraunhofer FEP combined a green top-emitting OLED with a thin-film optical filter and thin-film encapsulation so that a sample substance can be brought in proximity to the excitation source. Both developed devices are suitable for large area deposition and integration on silicon-backplanes like wafers as light source for optical excitation to detect fluorescence or phosphorescence signals.

Dr. Michael Thomschke, project leader at Fraunhofer FEP states: “These developments could be incorporated in very small ultra-thin organic devices based on glass, foil or opaque silicon-backplanes. The integration e.g. on silicon-wafers could be very cost-efficient. The corresponding processes allow large area manufacturing as well as devices in the µm scale.”

Later on, such device could be extended with microfluidics or external optics to fit a certain application.

Next to the results for for OLED applications using UV-electroluminescence, Fraunhofer FEP will also present further demonstrators of our latest OLED microdisplays and flexible OLED on different substrates at our booth during the conference.

Besides the exhibition Dr. Michael Thomschke will give a talk „OLED on Silicon for Sensor Applications“ about the latest approaches of OLED devices for lab-on-a-chip applications on Wednesday, December 3, 15:45 – 16:05 in Snow Hall B.

[BarryAllen]

Are There OLEDs in Apple Inc.’s Future?

By Ashraf Eassa

Following Universal Display's (NASDAQ: OLED ) "mixed Q3 results," fellow Fool Steve Symington wrote an excellent piece defending the company's long-term story. While Universal did drop its full-year revenue guidance range of $190 million to $205 million to between $183 million and $185 million, Symington did highlight the fact that smartphones and wearables are increasingly adopting OLED technology.

A review of Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL ) recent job listings suggests Universal Display's long-term future might include spots inside Apple's iDevices.

Apple is hiring: "OLED process experience is preferred"
On Nov. 4, Apple posted a job listing for a "Display Technical Process Manager." This person will be "responsible for the development and implementation of cutting edge production technology, high volume manufacturing processes for displays."

The fact that Apple is hiring for this position isn't particularly noteworthy. What did stand out, though, is that among the "key qualifications" listed for this position, Apple explicitly stated: "OLED process experience is preferred" [emphasis mine].

Could this mean that Apple is looking to more broadly adopt OLED displays?

Apple Watch already uses OLED; could iPhone be next?
According to OLED-Info.com, the upcoming Apple Watch will include an OLED. According to Craig Freudenrich from HowStuffWorks, OLED displays offer a number of advantages. They:
•Don't require backlighting, which means lower power consumption than LCDs;
•Offer larger fields of view;
•Are thinner and lighter than LCDs; and
•Are brighter than LEDs.

Freudenrich pointed out, though, that OLEDs do have their fair share of problems, namely:
•Blue OLED films apparently offer very short lifetimes relative to the red and green OLED films;
•The "manufacturing processes" for creating OLEDs are costly; and
•OLEDs are apparently quite vulnerable to water.

At any rate, it seems OLED technology offers some compelling advantages over the LCDs that Apple uses today. Indeed, DisplayMate said while the iPhone 6 Plus has the best mobile LCD that it has tested yet, it still gave the "best mobile display" title to the OLED found on the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

Why does it make sense on Apple Watch, but not iPhone, today?
Assuming the report that the Apple Watch will employ OLEDs is correct, the question becomes why this technology would make sense for that device but not some of other Apple's product lines. My guess is that it all comes down to margins.

The Apple Watch features a relatively small display, and the cheapest of the watches will, according to Apple, retail at $349. MacRumors cited a report from iGen.fr claiming that the stainless steel variant of Apple Watch will begin at $500 and that the gold variant will sell for between $4,000 and $5,000.

I'd imagine that at these prices, the gross margin percentage per unit compared to an iPhone will be quite high, so using a relatively small OLED probably isn't going to have a big financial impact on Apple's business. Sticking a display that is significantly more expensive to produce onto Apple's bread-and-butter iPhone, on the other hand, could meaningfully hurt profits.

Apple still wants the best
However, Apple does tend to care a lot about the quality of the displays found on its devices. In fact, CNET quoted CEO Tim Cook as saying "We want the best display, and I think we've got it."

Today LCDs seem to be doing the job well -- the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus displays have been widely praised -- but if Apple eventually needs to move to OLEDs to have the "best display," then I think the company will work closely with suppliers to try to make deploying OLEDs as cost effective as possible.

[FreeGrass]

Samsung slams door on OLED TVs, makes QUANTUM dot LEAP

LG says will stick with it, but be ready to watch it cave in...

Samsung has said that it intends to focus on UHD TVs using LCD panels augmented by quantum dot technology, instead of pushing OLED as a commercial replacement for LCD. This is the kind of decision that might mean that OLED never takes off in the larger form factors.

Kim Hyun-Seok, the head of Samsung’s TV business, told reporters that the firm doesn’t intend to change its OLED strategy this year or next – meaning that it will look to quantum dots to wring the life out of LCD instead of taking the plunge to OLED.

Chief OLED rival LG said it will continue to pursue the OLED dream. “We will put everything into OLED as we are confident that it will replace LCD as the TV standard in the coming years,” said LG spokesman San Kim while showing off a new UHD OLED TV earlier this year.

Evidently Samsung disagrees, and it is planning on showcasing its new quantum dot tech at CES 2015. They can’t both be right, and this division will show in sales during 2015, we suspect.

OLED has been vaunted as the next-gen display technology for a few years now, with its improved colours and contrast over LCD. But the high cost of manufacture means that it was always unlikely to dethrone LCD until its cost came down, and that meant its yields had to rise dramatically.

Quantum dot (QD) technology also promises to improve the picture quality of LCD, but without requiring the industry to completely overhaul its manufacturing processes and retool. Like telcos and ISPs investing and clinging to copper lines instead of taking the plunge into fibre, the display manufacturers are married to LCD – and the divorce looks messy enough to deter them from change.

QD-LED arrays right now suffer the same cost problems as OLED, but to a much worse degree. Full QD-LED arrays are unfeasibly expensive to make, but the technology has found its way into backlighting which drastically improves the colour performance of LCD panels over LED backlighting. QD-LCD threatens to completely undermine OLED’s claims for superior color and brightness performance – eventually at a much cheaper price point and with improved power consumption to boot.

Quantum dots are nanocrystal particles made out of semiconductor materials. Due to their incredibly small size, the particles display the quantum mechanical property of quantum confinement – hence their name. The dots emit light according to their size, and are triggered by light or an electrical current. Smaller dots are nearer the violet end of the visible light spectrum, while the larger ones are at the red end.

The dots can be assembled into a full QD-LED array using a similar process to manufacturing OLED, but in LCD the dots will be used to create a colour filter film for the LED backlighting that negates crosstalk between the colour channels – which will allow engineers to calibrate the displays to output much better colour, while remaining relatively cheap to produce.

When Faultline first looked at QD, we found a company called QD Vision, which produces a QD film under the Color IQ moniker. The Color IQ tech has been used in Sony’s Bravia TVs, and has so far shipped 2 million units. QD Vision says that LCD panels can only natively reproduce 60 to 70 per cent of the NTSC color standards, but by adding its Color IQ film, those same panels can achieve 100 per cent. Another company, Nanosys, has a similar product called QD Enhancement Film (QDEF).

So what is next for OLED? It currently has a vibrant future in smaller panels, particularly in smartphones and tablets. Laptops could be the next major growth area, but not if the industry spends no more on R&D, to get it to be the central large-screen technology.

And this will likely throw up a few confusing consumer experiences - depending on the quality of QD TVs. If we get to a point where the average OLED tablet has a noticeably better picture quality than the TV, this could prove the tipping point that pushes TV the way of the HiFi.

Once upon a time, music was a live and communal experience. Then with the advent of recording technology, it became possible to place and time shift the experience – but due to the poor quality of headphones (which would make the listening experience private) listening remained communal, on large high fidelity systems that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars.

But as headphones improved and playback devices got smaller (cassette decks, Walkmans, and the tipping point that was the iPod) music become a predominantly private affair.

Live music is now an event as opposed to the norm, and it’s not hard to see video travelling that same road. That same journey is taking place with screens. Now video can be consumed on phones and tablets, with the only downside being the relatively poor quality of the audio – which is easily countered by using a pair of headphones.

TV as a physical medium, rather than its content, is already losing ground to smaller screens, largely due to their portability and ease of use. If picture quality, the last great bastion of the TV, is also undermined by tablets, then the communal-viewing living-room dynamic is as good as dead and buried. Ironically, small form-factor OLED might end up killing the use-case it has been forecast to transform.

[Frankieshops]

In at 25

[Cognition]

Update

Universal Display Corporation (Nasdaq: OLED), enabling energy-efficient displays and lighting with its UniversalPHOLED® technology and materials, today announced that its results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2014, will be released on Thursday, November 6, 2014 after market close. At that time, a copy of the financial results release will be available on the Company’s website at www.udcoled.com.

In conjunction with this release, Universal Display will host a conference call on Thursday, November 6, 2014 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The live webcast of the conference call can be accessed under the "events" portion of the Company's website. Those wishing to participate in the live call should dial 1-888-468-2440 (toll-free) or 1-719-457-1512, and reference conference ID 1670062. An online archive of the webcast will be available within two hours of the conclusion of the call.

[Fletch]

New smartwatch uses OLED display,
Fletch

[Fletch]

Thanks for the info. A longer term view shows we have some overhead to work off........before new highs,
Fletch

[BarryAllen]

Universal Display Corporation Ranks as Fortune’s 25th Fastest Growing Public Company

Universal Display Corporation (OLED), enabling energy-efficient displays and lighting with its UniversalPHOLED® technology and materials, announced today that it ranked 25th on the 2014 Fortune Magazine list of 100 Fastest-Growing Public Companies.

Universal Display was New Jersey’s fastest-growing public company and a leading company among the technology sector rankings. Fortune Magazine has noted Universal Display’s exceptional revenue and EPS growth, with three-year annual growth rates of 63% and 144%, respectively. The Company attributes its growth to the expanding OLED market and rapid adoption of its highly-efficient UniversalPHOLED technology and phosphorescent material systems. PHOLED technology is a key to low power consumption, brightness and long lifetime OLED displays and lighting sources.

“The OLED industry is growing rapidly, and we have positioned Universal Display to capitalize on the myriad opportunities within the display and lighting industries,” said Steven V. Abramson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Universal Display. “It’s an honor to be ranked among so many successful global companies. With our customers and partners, we are building for sustainable innovation and growth in the OLED industry. Our team is creating a bright future for the OLED market.”

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/universal-display-corporation-ranks-fortune-210000537.html

[BarryAllen]

Universal Display: 20X Jackpot In 2018?

Summary

This article presents an outrageously optimistic scenario for Universal Display.
The OLED market can grow 36X compared to 2013 (unlikely, but possible!).
If this happens, Universal Display's stock price will be 20 times higher than today.
Yes, this is a wild forecast for 2018. But it's a possible one.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2308775-universal-display-20x-jackpot-in-2018

UDC share value in 2018

As we said, UDC will have a profit of $2.1 billion in 2018. There are 46.5 million shares outstanding as of the end of 2013, so this means an EPS of $45. The company has already generated a huge cash pile of $2 billion by 2018 (even after several acquisitions), or $40 per share. Assuming a P/E of 15, UDC's share price is $40 plus $45 x 15, or $715. That is over 20 times higher than the stock price today.

Note about P/E: UDC's current P/E ratio is about 18. If this scenario plays out, it means growth rate has been phenomenal, and the P/E ratio should go up. On the other hand, by 2018 the P/E may decline due to patent expiration, concerns over further growth and market saturation. So I used a P/E of 15 in my calculations.

If you're a UDC long, this is my highest scenario. I'll say this one last time - I'm sure that my estimates are too high, don't take this forecast seriously. But then again, why not be optimistic for a change? Didn't I say this is going to be fun?

Oh, and one final request - please do not quote this article in 2018 as it might be embarrassing for me... unless of course, I was spot on.

[Fletch]

I've said this for way too many charts but this is making or has made a cup with handle. Not perfectly shaped but near the breakout area,
Fletch

[Fletch]

Beat earnings and guided up. Bad news caused the sell off before earnings. The gap isn't good,
Fletch

[ECole]

Conf call transcript- Presentation at UBS-Global-Technology-Conference


http://www.earningsimpact.com/Transcript/84620/OLED/Universal-Display-Corporation---UBS-Global-Technology-Conference

[cellardoor]

Cambridge Display Q1 loss narrows: http://yahoo.reuters.com/stocks/QuoteCompanyNewsArticle.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20060504....