Notes (not from me) from the Gabelli call yesterday.
wsw.com 
investorvillage.com
More on the Gabelli Call
1) Reiterated guidance for the upcoming Q, and for next year. The
Piper note this morning had said they were worried about achieving guidance,
so good to see management reiterate there view that they "were very
comfortable with rev guidance"
2) LG- have been renewing license agreements every 6 months, and the
license fee is build into the material sales price. PANL says they are "very
comfortable" with how this looks, but mentioned they are currently in
discussions and they "expect to sign a long term agreement, though not in
the next couple weeks". This seems to be hinting that the current agreement
(which expires at end of the year) will likely just be renewed while they
try and hammer out the long-term contract. But this is the first time they
ever stated that LG will likely sign a long term agreement similar to
Samsung. With these the two main OLED players, I think this is really
important data around their comfort level with the strength of their IP.
Other takeaways:
* 90-95% of OLED market is Samsung. Samsung looked at their IP prior
to signing a 7 year agreement. The agreement includes clause that Samsung
will NOT challenge any of their IP.
* LG has said they will display 55" OLED TVs at CES in Jan
* News source Displaybank has said that both LG and Samsung will
ship OLED TVs in the 2nd half of '12
* When asked about the recent patent concerns, they flagged that
their patents are around Phosphorescent OLEDs, not traditional OLEDs. (this
seems to be direct response to the StreetSweeper article that was rife with
inaccuracies)
* When asked about Sumitomo saying that they are building a factory
for polymer based materials, PANL says they have IP around polymer (not just
small molecule, which Samsung uses) materials and that Sumitomo will be
unable to make phosphorescent polymer materials.
* When asked about stock sales, he said that the bulk of them were
by employees that have been with the company since the beginning, and they
were 10 year options that expired this Fri and were in the money. Most were
part of a 10b plan that was filed in the beginning of the year. Says
everyone is "very committed to the company", and that the insider ownership
still is pretty constant at around 11%.
* When asked about the patent challenge and decisions in EU, said
that "we don't see these decisions affecting our ability to license our
technology". Also noted that all patents remain fully enforceable during
litigation/appeal process, and that these things normally take years.
* When asked about Apple not using OLEDs, they said that the only
supplier who can offer any size is Samsung, and they are competitors.
Directed the analyst to "ask Apple", but speculated that Samsung will keep
the OLED screens for themselves until "they have excess capacity".
* When asked about the cash on the balance sheet, said they would
not do buybacks, but instead they raised the cash as they were looking for
IP acquisitions that would "allow them to capture a bigger share of the OLED
market"; which they would do by enhancing the lifetime of their IP, or by
acquiring additional technologies w/in the OLED stack.
* When asked about OLED TV adoption, said there are some
manufacturing hurdles that need to be solved, but that they are confident
they will occur. Also said that going from a mobile to TV screen in a few
years is unheard of in the display world (said it took 25 years for LCDs to
make this hurdle), so feels like manufacturing progress is actually
incredibly fast right now. |
