Why Universal Display Corp. Stock Popped Today

 

Image source: Universal Display Corp.

What: Shares of Universal Display Corp. (OLED 3.39%) jumped as much as 10.7% early Monday after receiving an upgrade from Goldman Sachs analyst Brian Lee.

 

So what: Specifically, Lee upgraded Universal Display stock this morning to "buy" from "hold," and simultaneously increased his 12-month per-share price target to $76 from $55 -- a roughly 35% premium to Friday's closing price.

 

To justify his more bullish stance, Lee noted that OLED stands to benefit not only from Apple's (AAPL +0.17%) first-time adoption of OLED displays in its iPhone line up starting next year, but also from a "secular shift across the handset market with roughly 10% penetration today but a potential 'LED 2.0' hockey-stick adoption across multiple product cycles and categories in coming years."

Now what: I've already written at length on the seeming inevitability of Apple's impending shift to OLED, most recently including reports it struck a deal with leading OLED display producer -- and Universal Display's single largest customer -- Samsung Display, under which the South Korean company will supply 100 million 5.5-inch OLED smartphone displays annually to the folks in Cupertino.

Despite technically falling short of Wall Street's revenue expectations with its first-quarter 2016 results earlier this month, Universal Display management highlighted a tremendous amount of activity and financial resources being poured into the OLED industry in these early stages of growth, as an increasing number of manufacturers reveal plans to develop and bolster manufacturing for OLED smartphones, tablets, lighting solutions, and televisions over the next several years.

So even with shares of Universal Display stock trading near all-time highs as of this writing, I remain convinced it has plenty of room to run higher as its flagship OLED technology becomes more ubiquitous by the day.