What happened
Shares of Universal Display (OLED -2.06%) lit up on Thursday morning, peaking at a gain of 13.6% by 11:10 a.m. ET. The developer and materials reseller for the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels that you see in smartphones and high-end TV sets posted mixed fourth-quarter results last night, but also announced a long-awaited technology upgrade.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Universal Display's fourth-quarter revenue landed at $146.2 million, 3.3% above the year-ago period. However, earnings fell from $1.13 to $0.96 per diluted share over the same time span. Your average analyst expected earnings of roughly $1 per share on revenue near $143.9 million. The company also boosted its quarterly dividend from $0.20 to $0.30 per share, which works out to an effective yield of 0.8% at today's share prices.
At the same time, CEO Sidney Rosenblatt said that the company is shipping phosphorescent blue OLED materials for the first time ever, completing the full OLED display stack and eliminating the need to incorporate competing technologies for the blue component. That was the big, flashy news that drove the stock sharply higher.
Now what
The company has been working on this blue component for decades. The organic chemistry behind this advance is complicated, but the payoff is simple: Universal's blue OLED elements used to wear out much faster than their red and green siblings, and the company has finally found a way to erase that deal-breaking downside. Fully upgraded OLED panels should see lower power consumption and brighter colors, and the manufacturing process is simpler when all of the color elements depend on the same fundamental chemistry.
Panel builders should put this new product through their testing processes in short order, leading up to significant cost savings and product improvements for them while adding a meaningful scoop of revenue to Universal Display's supply contracts.
"We believe that the commercial introduction of our full-color emissive stack has the potential to unlock a vast array of opportunities for higher energy-efficiency and higher performance across a broad range of OLED applications," Rosenblatt stated in Universal's press materials.
This is a big deal, but the direct financial payoff will take a while. Rosenblatt expects panels with the new and improved blue element to hit store shelves in 2024. At the same time, Universal Display's stock still sits 39% below its 52-week highs, giving patient investors a wide-open buying window as the blue material upgrade unlocks a potentially massive growth spurt in a couple of years.
