LG Display is planning to change its major source of sales from LCD to OLED by investing into 10.5th generation, 8th generation, and 6th generation OLEDs and has set a goal of having OLED take up 40% of entire sales by 2020. It is going to have P10 plant, which is a new plant, as 'OLED Hub'.
LG Display announced such plans at its second quarter performance announcement that took place on the 27th. LG Display is going to prepare 10.5th generation OLED and 6th generation flexible OLED facilities, which will require total of $13.4 billion (15 trillion KRW) of investment, at its P10 plant located in Paju. It is also planning to construct 8.5th generation OLED line in Guangzhou, China by investing $4.47 billion (5 trillion KRW) in order to increase profitability and production capacity of 8th generation OLED.
LG Display is planning to produce 30,000 6th generation flexible OLEDs per month starting from 2019 by investing $4.47 billion (5 trillion KRW) into 6th generation flexible OLED line that will be newly added to P10 plant. Its E5 line, which is located in Gumi, will be mass-producing 15,000 OLEDs per month starting from end of this year while its E6 line located in Paju is going to start mass-producing 15,000 sheets per month during second quarter of next year. It is predicting that it will have production capacity of 65,000 6th generation flexible OLEDs per month by 2020.
Panoramic view of LG Display’s Paju Industrial Complex (Picture = LG Display)
LG Display's 8.5th generation OLED line located in Guangzhou will operate starting from first half of 2019. It is going to invest $4.47 billion (5 trillion KRW) so that this line will have production capacity of 60,000 OLEDs per month.
LG Display is currently producing 78,000 8th generation panels from its E4-1 line and it started operating its E4-2 line with a goal of having production capacity of 60,000 panels per month by end of this year. Although it is expected to have production capacity of 198,000 OLEDs per month by 2020, there is a chance that its current production capacity is not sufficient enough to satisfy demands from markets in 2018 and 2019. LG Display is predicting that there will be 6 million OLED markets in the world by 2020.
"Production of OLED TV panels will be closely tied to timing when there are strong demands from markets." said CFO Kim Sang-don of LG Display. "We are also considering about increasing output of current facilities by applying MMG (Multi Model Glass) strategy and others."
LG Display is predicting that percentage of large and small and medium OLEDs will take up about 10% of this year's entire sales.
Although some markets worry that price of LCD might decline sharply, LG Display is optimistic about its second-half performance. Even if sales of TVs are low, it is predicting that size of TVs will continue to become bigger.
"We predict that there will be limited additional decline of price because there aren’t any structural changes to supply and demand as amount of supply of panels continues to be limited due to enlargement of TVs." said Executive Director Kim Sang-don.
Staff Reporter Bae, Okjin | [email protected]
