South Korea’s LG Display is on a revenue and profits roil, helped by the popularity of its OLED technology, and in particular the production of panels for Ultra-HD use.

CFO Don Kim told analysts on its Q4 2016 conference call that the company had “solidified the foundation for business expansion in terms of production, customer and products by turning positive EBITDA in the second half we now have the basis to speed our business performance improvement going forward. Also for small to midsized OLED through a timely 6^th generation investment we have secured a foothold to enable early catch up in response to accelerated growth from small to mid plastic OLED business.”

Kim said that LG Display’s Q4 revenue was up 18 per cent Q-on-Q to KRW7,936 billion (€6.3bn). Operating income was up 180 per cent quarter-on-quarter to KRW904.3 billion, helped by large sized UHD (panels) and in touch products.

LG Display shipped 10.77 million square metres of panels (in OLED and LCD form).

He said that usually Q1 is the slowest sales season of the year, but TV sales were strong at the year end and demand continues to be strong on very low industry inventory.  He added that his factory output would translate into 1.5-1.8 million TV units, and that OLED yield within the factories was now better than 80 per cent. “If you look at the LCD business it took us 10 years to reach the golden yield level at 80 per cent before OLED in light of the fact that we were able to achieve the golden level (80+ per cent) in two years it is quite meaningful.”

“I think it is quite clear that the competition in the large size market is going to become fiercer as we go into the future. In terms of our company if you look at the ultra large sizes above 60-inch as well as high resolution products like UHD 8K, we have a product competitiveness and based on which we are continuously going to expand on our differentiating product with which we would compete in the market,” Kim added.

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