Universal Display Corporation (NASDAQ:OLED) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Sydney Ho with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.

Unidentififed Analyst: Great. Thanks, guys. Thanks for taking the question. This is John Marco. I’m from Sydney. First question on gross margin. Brian, maybe if you can walk us through some of the puts and takes on gross margin for next quarter. And then just to follow up, how do you get back to that sort of long-term target range of 77% to 78% for gross margin?

Brian Millard: So, we did update slightly our expectation for the year. Now we expect 76 to 77% for the year, and that’s largely due to $2.5 million of inventory provisions that we had to put up in Q3 due to — as we went through our evaluation of inventory on hand. So, that’s really what resulted in the tweak this quarter. We always are identifying opportunities, cost reduction opportunities, and making sure that we’re being thoughtful as we go through contract negotiations in terms of gross margins. So, we’re always doing everything we can to increase it. I think that as volumes continue to increase in the years ahead, we also have the impact of volume pricing dynamics as well as certain input costs to our materials that have varied and increased in certain areas over the course of time. But it’s something we focus a lot of attention on.

Unidentififed Analyst: Okay. That’s very clear. Thanks. And then my second question on, I guess, tandem OLED. We’ve been hearing a little bit more about the adoption within certain IT devices. Can you just walk us through sort of the implications on your business given the potential adoption of this two-stack structure?

Brian Millard: It’s certainly an incremental opportunity because of the increased volumes of our material that would be needed in a tandem structure. It’s hard to say right now what the multiplier is there. It’s somewhere between one and two times, but we really won’t know until we see some of those products come closer to market and be able to provide some insight on that.

Operator: Our next question is from Martin Yang with Oppenheimer and Company. Please proceed.

Martin Yang: Hi. Thank you for taking my question. First question on contract risk assurance revenues. Can you maybe talk about what contributes to the volatility in that revenue and why was it down versus the past few quarters?

Brian Millard: Yes. So, those are our Adesis revenues, our Adesis subsidiary. Their performance in the quarter was a little bit variable. There were just some timing issues that impacted that business in Q3. We do expect for Q4 for them to kind of get back on track with the recent run rate. And for 2024, we also expect them to have growth off of where they are this year.

Martin Yang: Got it. Thanks. And second question is can you talk about the impact on utilization charges for Shannon after that facility is purchased? Will we — should we expect no more similar charges after the acquisition is done?

Brian Millard: So, the acquisition didn’t have an impact on the utilization or underutilization of the site. But independent of the acquisition, we actually were able to utilize Shannon to a greater degree in Q3, and we also expect in Q4 to utilize it to a greater degree. So, the underutilization for all of Q3 was $2 million, which is much less than it’s been in other recent quarters.

Martin Yang: A follow-up on that, would you say that the utilization — underutilization at Shannon during 3Q was less comparing to 2Q? So, did Shannon perform better than expected?