BOE – Another Celebration

BOE – Another Celebration

​On December 28, BOE officially began mass production at its Gen 6 OLED fab in Chongqing, a fab that will eventually be capable of producing 48,000 Gen 6 sheets/month.  The fab, which is operating a 16,000 phase 1 line currently and constructing phase 2 and phase 3 lines which are expected to be opening in 2022, cost ~$7.3b to build and will help BOE compete against both Samsung Display and LG Display for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone display business going forward.  While the local press says that phase 2 production will start in January, and BOE will increase shipments to 80m units next year, we expect mass production, based on a more conservative ramp to see an incremental 27m units from Chongqing in 2022, but we note that is at 100% yield, which we expect is far different than what is seen currently and what will be the case as the new Chongqing lines ramp up. 
On 11/08/21 we noted a more muted party at BOE, celebrating the company’s official inclusion into Apple’s iPhone display supply chain, something that had presented a number of challenges to the company since 2020.  When all three phases of the Chongqing fab are in operation and the even newer Gen 6 flexible OLED fab in Fuzhou is completed, BOE will have a combined Gen 6 capacity of 144,000 sheets/month, second only to Samsung Display, who remains the leader in the flexible OLED space, roughly double the capacity of LG Display’s small panel flexible OLED capacity and four times the flexible OLED capacity of any other Chinese small panel OLED producer.