Earnings Labs

Universal Display Corporation (OLED)

Q4 2010 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 17, 2011

$89.62

-1.76%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-0.70%

1 Week

+3.94%

1 Month

+5.07%

vs S&P

+2.95%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to today's Universal Display Corporation fourth quarter and fiscal year 2010 earning conference call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time I'd like to turn the conference over to Joe Hassett. Please go ahead.

Joe Hassett

Management

Thank you and good afternoon, everybody. With us today are Steve Abramson, President and Chief Executive Officer and Sid Rosenblatt, Chief Financial Officer of Universal Display Corporation. Let me begin today by reminding you that this call is a property of Universal Display. Any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the expressed written consent of Universal Display is strictly prohibited. Further, as this call is being webcast live and will be made available for a period of time on Universal Display’s website. This call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the live webcast of this call, March 15, 2011. All statements in this conference that are not historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Universal Display's beliefs, expectations, hopes, or intentions regarding the future. It is important to note that these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause Universal Display's actual results to differ from those projected. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in the company's periodic reports filed with the SEC. Universal Display disclaims any obligation to update any of these statements. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Steve Abramson, President and CEO of Universal Display. Please go ahead, Steve.

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

Thank you, Joe. And welcome to everyone listening on today's call and webcast. First, as you all know, we have had long-term relationships with a number of companies, researchers, and individuals in Japan. We, like others around the world, are deeply saddened by the tragic situation there after the earthquake last Friday. On behalf of our entire company, we would like to let all of our partners and friends know that they are in our thoughts and prayers. This afternoon, I'll start with a very quick overview of our financial results. I will then will discuss highlights from the quarter and update everyone on our latest plans and developments to grow our [ph] legacy and material supply businesses in both the display and lighting markets. Sid will then follow with more detail on our financials before we open the call to questions. I am pleased to report that our revision for the fourth quarter and full year rose significantly. Revenues for the fourth quarter doubled and revenues for the year almost doubled. Likewise, our operating loss decreased dramatically, by approximately 50%. Net loss was about the same due to the accounting for our stock warrant liability, which Sid explains every quarter and which he will again explain on this call. We are pleased with our financial performance this past year. Sid will go through all the detail in a few minutes. This year may have represented the beginning of the long-awaited inflection point for the OLED display market. Our revenue growth over the course of the year is consistent with the success of the bright, beautiful energy-efficient displays. Powered by our Universal PHOLED Technology and materials, displays have come to be an important feature consumers are demanding of their high-end smartphones and other hand-held devices. Of the more notable accomplishments,…

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you Steve, and again, thank you everyone for joining us on the call today. I'll be reviewing the financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2010 as well as share some insights from the quarter after which we will open the call to take your questions. Revenues for the fourth quarter totaled $10.8 million, an increase of $5.9 million, or approximately 120% compared to revenue of $4.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2009. On a sequential basis, revenues advanced $3.7 million over the third quarter of 2010 as our business continues to build momentum. Commercial revenue was $4.5 million for the fourth quarter, an increase of approximately 140% compared to commercial revenue of $1.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2009. The increase was primarily due to increased commercial chemical and royalty revenue, which mainly represents chemicals shipped and royalties received under our patent license agreement with Samsung SMD. Developmental revenue was approximately $6.3 million for the fourth quarter, an increase of approximately 110% compared to developmental revealed of $3 million for the fourth quarter of 2009. The increase was primarily due to a $3.5 million increase in development chemical sales. Total operating expenses for the fourth quarter were $11 million, up from $9 million from the fourth quarter of 2009. This is consistent with company growth over the past 12 months and within company expectations. Research and development expenses for the fourth quarter were $5.6 million, up from $5.1 million from the same period in 2009. This is consistent with the company's expectations for the quarter. Selling, general, and administrative expenses for the quarter were $3.3 million, up from $2.9 million for the same quarter in 2009. The increase was mainly due to increased employee costs, primarily stock compensation, costs associated with the implementation of…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Today's question and answer session will be conducted electronically. (Operating Instructions) And we'll go first to Yair Reiner.

Yair Reiner

Management

Thank you, so my first question has to do with the sizable investment that both Samsung and LG Display are putting forward this year to do a large-size test line. There have been a number of competing technologies that you have talked about in the past for being able to manufacture larger-generation fabs. I'm wondering what are you seeing in terms of progress on that front that you think has given the panel makers incremental confidence to go and spend those billions of dollars on the test line? And do you have any sense of which of these competing manufacturing technologies might be in the lead?

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

I think manufacturers are seeing a constant improvement in the yield performance and size of the substrates that are able to be handled by vacuum thermal evaporation. We've seen that that can go all the way up to a Gen-5.5, what used to be less than a Gen-2. They're also seeing I believe some improvements in the ink jet printing P2OLED technologies as well as possibly [ph] lippy or thermal laser types of printing. I know that our object is to make sure that whatever technology the manufacturers use, it will have our phosphorescent OLED materials used in them, so we're making sure that our materials are usable in all different configurations.

Yair Reiner

Management

Got it, and just one more and I'll get back in the queue. Can you give us an update on where you are with green? How many customers are testing it? Any sense of when you might be able to make an announcement about that going into commercialization?

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

Green is being widely sampled from a technical standpoint it seems to have no problems, and when the manufacturers start adopting it, we'll be able to announce it.

Yair Reiner

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Jim Rashudy with Needham & Company Jim Rashudy– Needham & Company: Hi, good afternoon. Apart from SMD on the commercial revenue line, was there any other customer concentration of overall revenues? Samsung was about 40%?

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

Yes, and there is just some small commercial chemicals sold to another customer, but most of it is, on a commercial side, Samsung. Jim Rashudy– Needham & Company: Okay, and Sid I haven't seen the 10-K but I was wondering if there is any color you can provide just the development revenue line? I think sequentially it was up about 50% and just wondering what some of the components that might have driven that were?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Well as I mentioned, the bulk of it is in development chemicals sold to LG. The development chemicals were up about $8.6 million for the (inaudible) - Jim Rashudy– Needham & Company: Okay.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

And LG is in the scale-up process and has been for the past six or eight months, and as you're aware, until they put it into a commercial product, we record it as developmental chemicals. Jim Rashudy– Needham & Company: A few weeks ago, you announced that you had acquired the IP patents that Motorola had. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that. I don't know if any of the terms of the transaction are in the 10-K, but I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

No, the terms are not disclosed, but we think this is something that made a lot of sense for us in terms of aggregating IP in the OLED space. We had a license agreement for these patents, but it made some sense for us to acquire them when the opportunity came up, and we think it was a good move on our part, and it's something that makes a lot of sense. Jim Rashudy– Needham & Company: Okay, was it something where you had the right of first refusal or anything like that?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

We actually signed a license agreement. We had a license agreement with Motorola in 2000, but as you're aware, we also had ongoing royalties that we had to pay, so by acquiring these patents, we no longer have this royalty we have to pay in the future. We now own those patents. Jim Rashudy– Needham & Company: Okay, I was just wondering about the timing of it, and I'm assuming that it may have something to do with some of the changes at Motorola or is this - ?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

I don't really have an answer for you in terms of the timing of it, when it occurred when it did. Jim Rashudy– Needham & Company: Okay, and just last question. Just with respect to a couple of the op-ex lines, on the SG&A side, that was down a little bit sequentially. Is there anything going forward anything – should we assume that moving up a little bit closer to Q3 levels?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I think you need to look at the whole year and predict it by that and quarter four (inaudible) things like that, so I really do think you need to look at the whole year and see what the trend is and we should continue (inaudible) Jim Rashudy– Needham & Company: And R&D next year, should we assume is similar type of level or up a little as you invest a little bit more?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

I think it will go up a little bit but I don't see it going up significantly. Jim Rashudy– Needham & Company: Okay, thanks very much.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Jim.

Operator

Operator

We'll take our next question from Rob Stone with Cowen and Co.

Rob Stone

Management

Hey guys, way to finish the year.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Rob.

Rob Stone

Management

I apologize, I couldn't quite catch what you said about the cost of chemicals and you've reclassified and it's now only showing the cost of commercial chemicals, so my two-part question is could you just give us a little more color on the breakdown of revenue, how much were chemical sales in commercial and development and roughly what was the margin on each of those? If the line that shows cost of chemical sales is only commercial, where does the cost of development chemicals appear in the P&L? Thanks,

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

I'll answer that backward. The cost of development is really an R&D expense, so it will appear in research and development, it is costs that are associated with our arrangement with PPG Industries. So as we scale these, we realized it made sense that it was really R&D and trying to allocate the R&D costs to these specific chemicals is [ph] different, so it really was an R&D expense so we made a decision to only include it on the commercial chemical side. Commercial chemicals for the year were up about $9 million compared to last year. So these costs are only associated with the direct costs of acquiring these from PPG.

Rob Stone

Management

So that means your R&D line is apt to fluctuate somewhat now with the revenue from development chemicals as well?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Somewhat, that's correct. This year was up. Because it was LG, we actually expected to be in commercial production first part of this year, and they just bought a lot of chemicals.

Rob Stone

Management

Okay, and are you able to say how many customers besides LG are purchasing development chemicals at this point?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

There's at least ten, or more. A lot of our customers that we have agreements with that we've announced, short-term agreements and development agreements buy these materials. We've got a number of companies that we've worked with over the years. On our website we've got lighting companies that have shown - LG Chem, PDW also displayed OLED lighting conference and in it they said that it has our (inaudible) materials. So it is quite a few companies.

Rob Stone

Management

Not trying to get you into a pattern of guiding by quarters just yet, but along those lines, given the very strong momentum in the business, do you see any sense of a seasonal revenue pattern in March or is all of that just going to be overpowered by the increase in capacity that's in the pipeline?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

We actually saw it last year. The first quarter of last year, even though the numbers were much smaller, was lower than the fourth quarter, and I think there is some seasonality in this business, and we expect some seasonality.

Rob Stone

Management

Okay. My final question is a housekeeping one. Does the non-cash charge for the stock warrant liability have any tax effective whereas if we want to get to the operational EPS?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

No, it does not. There is no tax effective.

Rob Stone

Management

Okay, thank you.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Rob.

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Darice Liu with Brigandine Advisors.

Darice Liu

Management

Good afternoon, guys. In -

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

Hi, Darice.

Darice Liu

Management

In terms of landscape customers, you talked about the big three: SMD, LG, AUL, but there are a number of other players that are working on or have [ph] announce invest in OLEDS such as [ph] BLE, (inaudible), orders of (inaudible) products. Can you talk about your visibility of new commercial customers coming online outside of the big three?

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

The short-form version Darice is that we know most of the players in the industry, but we've only announced a limited number because any types of relationships require both of us to talk to agree to announce it.

Darice Liu

Management

I guess I was trying to figure out – right now as we're modeling, we're focused on those three players SMD, LG, and AUL. But with these other companies working on OLED and with you working with them, is there any visibility or time line when you see X number of customers in 2012 or 2013 actually coming online from a commercial standpoint?

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

Darice, I think the short-term, the big three as you call it, are going to be the drivers in this market. I know a lot – many of the companies that you mentioned are in various stages of development of OLEDs but I think it will be a while.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

We don't see any significant numbers in the foreseeable future from any of those.

Darice Liu

Management

And I guess the second question is, following up on the [ph] FOLEDs materials, you mentioned that those materials are approaching comparable (inaudible). Is that across the board for all the colors? And could you provide an update on what's going on with customers (inaudible) possible commercialization of your RGB1/B2 architecture?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

We're probably seeing better - closer results in red and green than we are in blue on the P2OLEDs, we're taking it color by color. But we are seeing significant improvement on that side. And RGB1, B2, we're seeing some nice customer interest. It's a very interesting technology to get lower (inaudible)into the market early using a light blue phosphorescent material, but we don't have any updates to announce yet.

Darice Liu

Management

Okay, thanks guys.

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

Thanks, Darice.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Darice.

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Jed Dorsheimer with Canaccord.

Jed Dorsheimer

Management

Hi and thanks and congratulations on the quarter, guys.

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

Thanks, Jeff.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Jeff.

Jed Dorsheimer

Management

Pretty straightforward. I just have one question. In the commercial chemicals, any green in that, or is that still categorized 100% in development?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Yes, it's still 100% in development.

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

Thanks, Jed.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Jed.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). We'll go next to Andrew Abrams with Avian Securities.

Andrew Abrams

Management

Hi guys, congratulations also. And just maybe you could point us toward a spot at which you think commercial chemical numbers beat out your development chemical numbers? Just on an absolute basis, is there at point at which you would expect that to happen this year or is that a 2012 kind of issue?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Off the top of my head, I think the bulk of it was LG. Obviously we have others customers that will be ramping up. I think they will transfer into commercial. And as Samsung brings it Gen-5.5 facility online this year, we see that that obviously has much more capacity than its existing line, so I think this year you will see shifts go into commercial chemical as opposed to development chemicals. I think this year was somewhat of an aberration with LG taking somewhat longer than expected.

Andrew Abrams

Management

Is there anything you can tell us about the negotiations with Samsung that you haven't already discussed ad nauseam? Is there anything new that we can kind of focus on?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Probably not beyond the ad nauseam conversation that we've had.

Andrew Abrams

Management

Can you give us a time line would even help. Just one other quick question. On B1 B2, is this being shown to a number of customers or is this primarily a Samsung kind of issue at this point?

Steve Abrams

Management

We've actually presented it at technical conferences. We've talked to a number of people about it.

Andrew Abrams

Management

Got it. Okay, great Thanks a lot.

Steve Abrams

Management

Thanks, Andy.

Operator

Operator

And we'll now take a followup question from Jim Rashudy with Needham and Company.

Jim Rashudy

Management

Thanks. While it's not going to be a big part of your revenues going forward, you sometimes have a better sense of what your contract research research revenue might look like. Any sense as to how we might think about that in 2011?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

It was about $5 million for 2010 and $4.4 for 2009. It might be up a little, I don't see it going down, but I don't see a significant increase in it.

Jim Rashudy

Management

Okay. Sid or Steve, within the development chemicals area apart from LG, is there anything of any significance that you're seeing in that area on the lighting side in the quarter and are you seeing – I wonder if you could just talk about the activity on that part of the business as you think about 2011?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

I think for 2011, we've seen there are a number of customers that have purchased small quantities of material. They are making demos. I don't believe you'll see large quantities because no one is scaling up for large-scale manufacturing. But I think you will continue to see developmental chemicals category on the lighting side because there is a number of customers that – I just mentioned a few – that are showing lighting demos, working on it trying to come up with designs, and then you'll see with our Moser Baer relationship them starting once the facility gets a little further along, we'll start working on the materials. So there's a number of them, but I don't see it being a big number for the year.

Jim Rashudy

Management

Okay, and then as we see LG shift to commercial, the commercial line, will development chemicals still primarily be display related in 2011?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Primarily, but it's like I said, in that category is the lighting companies also.

Jim Rashudy

Management

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll now take a followup with Yair Reiner with Oppenheimer & Co. Yair Reiner with Oppenheimer & Co.: Yes, thank you. Just a question on the commercial chemical revenues. They're up about 55-60% quarter on quarter. I believe that your largest customer, Samsung, their capacity appears to have grown a lot less quarter on quarter something on the order of 10-15%. Can you maybe explain where the discrepancy in the amount of chemicals you sold versus the capacity they added, where that discrepancy might be? Has their use of the chemicals become less efficient or what else might explain that?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

On a quarter to quarter, it's particularly – we're talking about fourth quarter of last year, third quarter of last year. It really depends on their purchasing, depending on whether they've purchased. Since the numbers aren't that big, they purchased a lot in one quarter, they may have some left over for the next quarter. I think that they are being as efficient with the materials as they can be, but I don't see much change in their capacity during the quarters that I think you're talking about. Their facility I think was running pretty much full out during these last two quarters. Yair Reiner with Oppenheimer & Co.: So what does that imply for the March quarter? I think that they still don't have significant capacity coming on from December to March so should we assume the demand from commercial chemicals should be flattish near term until they start ramping the new facility?

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

I think that's correct. I don't see any – there's no increased capacity in this facility and it really is once the Gen-5.5 starts in the second quarter. Yair Reiner with Oppenheimer & Co.: Thank you.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude today's Q&A session. All the time I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Steve Abramson for any additional or closing remarks.

Steve Abramson

President and CEO

I would like to thank everybody for your support and have a good rest of the day. Thank you.

Sid Rosenblatt

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude today's conference Thank you for your participation.