7/30/2026

speaker
Sherry
Conference Moderator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Universal Display Corporation's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. My name is Sherry, and I will be your conference moderator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Darius Luce, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please proceed.

speaker
Darius Luce
Senior Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Universal Display's second quarter earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Steve Abramson, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Brian Millard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Before Steve begins, let me remind you that today's call is a property of Universal Display. Any redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of any portion of this call in any form without the express written consent of Universal Display is strictly prohibited. Further, 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, July 30th, 2026. During this call, we may make forward-looking statements based on current expectations These statements are subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties and our actual results may differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in the company's periodic reports filed with the SEC and should be referenced by anyone considering making any investments in the company's securities. Universal Display disclaims any obligation to update any of these statements. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Steve Abramson.

speaker
Steve Abramson
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Tarris, and good afternoon, everyone. As we look across the OLED industry, we continue to see investment, innovation, and expansion throughout the ecosystem. Display manufacturers are investing billions of dollars in new capacity. Brands are broadening adoption across a growing range of products and applications. And next-generation technologies continue to push the boundaries of performance and capability. Those developments reflect the industry's long-term growth trajectory. even as portions of the consumer electronics supply chain face a more challenging near-term environment. Rising memory costs and supply constraints continue to weigh on demand expectations, particularly within the smartphone market, where higher component costs are putting pressure on unit volumes. Those near-term headwinds are reflected in our updated outlook, which Brian will discuss in more detail. We believe it is important to separate the current cycle from the longer-term direction of the industry. While demand expectations have softened in the near term, we believe the industry's fundamental growth drivers remain firmly intact. Industry forecasts call for OLED area growth to be relatively flat this year, with positive growth expected to resume in 2027. And many of the investments that will support that next phase of growth are already underway today. After years of planning and development, Gen 8.6 OLED manufacturing is becoming a commercial reality. Samsung Display and BOE recently commenced mass production at their Gen 8.6 facilities, while VisionAux and TCL ChinaStar continue advancing their Greenfield projects. In addition, LG Display and Samsung Display have announced further Gen 6 investments. Most of these investments target end markets where adoption remains in its early stages. While OLED is already well-established in smartphones, with approximately 65% market penetration. IT, automotive, and TVs remain at a much earlier stage, with shares still in the low single digits. In automotive, recent introductions such as a Genesis GV70, Volvo EX60, and Zeekr 9X demonstrate how OLEDs are driving sophisticated digital cockpits in premium and electric vehicle interiors. Beyond expanding into new applications, one of OLED's key advantages is its ability to enable entirely new form factors. Foldable, tri-fold, and rollable devices are demonstrating how OLED flexibility can unlock new product designs and user experiences. Last week, Samsung unveiled its Galaxy Fold 8 series, featuring new flex titanium technology that significantly reduces crease visibility while improving durability. As additional brands enter the market and performance continues to improve, foldables are expected to evolve from a niche category into a more mainstream segment in the years ahead. Collectively, these industry developments highlight the significant runway that remains as OLED expands across new applications, larger display formats, and emerging form factors. As adoption broadens, customers continue to demand higher brightness, lower power consumption, longer lifetime, broader color gamut, and more advanced display architectures. Meeting these needs requires continued advances in materials and device technologies, which is where our expertise and technology leadership matters most. We are continuing to play a central role in advancing the materials and technology that underpin and drive the industry. Our decades of invention, development, and manufacturing know-how, a portfolio of more than 7,000 patents, strong customer relationships, and a global support infrastructure position us well as the industry leader entering its next phase of growth. One of the most important opportunities on our roadmap continues to be phosphorescent blue and the meaningful energy efficiency benefits it is expected to deliver. At SID Display Week in May, we presented additional technical results demonstrating continued progress towards a more robust phosphorescent blue system. including advances in efficiency, color performance, operational lifetime, and manufacturability. While commercialization timing continues to depend on customer roadmaps, we believe phosphorescent blue is a significant opportunity for both UDC and the broader industry. Beyond blue, we continue advancing and broadening our portfolio of next generation OLED technologies, including phosphorescent sensitized fluorescence, or PSF, tandem architectures, and innovations designed to enhance light extraction, increase power efficiency, and improve the visual appearance of the display. We look forward to sharing additional technical developments at Korea's Image Conference next month. We are also accelerating materials discovery and development through our internal advanced computational tools, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and agentic AI, as well as strategic collaborations. including our role as a founding member of Cusp AI's recently launched AI materials foundry. On the infrastructure front, we continue to invest alongside the OLED industry. Last month, we celebrated the grand opening of our new OLED technology and innovation center in Chengdu, China. As our third innovation tech center in Asia, following Korea and Hong Kong, it reinforces our commitment to providing on-the-ground local support and fostering collaboration with customers. As we look ahead, we remain confident in the OLED industry's growth trajectory. Continued investment in manufacturing capacity, expanding adoption across new applications of form factors, and advances in materials and device architectures reinforce our belief that the next growth phase is taking shape. Through our investments in innovation and infrastructure, we're helping to build the foundation for that future. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Brian.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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