LG Display said on Tuesday it plans to invest 3.3 trillion won ($2.8 billion) in small- to mid-sized organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panel production facilities.
The investment will take place starting this month until March 2024, the display panel maker said in a regulatory filing.
The investment will be in South Korea for sixth-generation OLED panels, and the facility is expected to begin operations in 2024, a spokesperson said.
Analysts said LG Display’s strategy of efficient OLED production expansion by achieving economies of scale added to its better-than-expected operating profit in the second quarter to 701 billion won ($607 million).
A recent TrendForce report said LG Display is the sole supplier of OLED TV panels. LG Display has expanded the production capacity of its Guangzhou-based OLED panel fab to 90k sheets/month in 2Q21. LG Display’s clients in the TV sector are increasingly willing to procure OLED panels in light of the narrowing gap between OLED panel prices and LCD panel prices.
The penetration rate of OLED panels in the TV panel market increased to 2.6 percent in 1H21, with about 3.556 million pcs shipped throughout the period. TrendForce expects annual OLED TV panel shipment for 2021 to reach 8 million pcs, with a 3 percent penetration rate in the overall TV panel market.
