In order to meet the competition in the display space, panel producers must spend substantial sums to develop new technologies and processes and as timelines for the development and implementation of new display technologies grows shorter, risk levels increase.  Panel producers, in many cases are forced to pick a leading edge technology, sometimes before it has been proven to be feasible from a mass production standpoint, or take the approach of researching as many new display technologies as possible.  While both approaches carry considerable risk, there are only a select few that can take the later approach, as the cost of spreading R&D across a number of technologies yields little in terms of breakthroughs.  Large panel producers allocate between 7% and 8% of revenue to R&D while smaller producers allocate as much as 25+%, but the dollar values are so much smaller that the effect is negligible.  Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) spent $15.85b on R&D last year, and while that covers Samsung Display (pvt), the company’s semiconductor business, and all other segments. Smaller panel producer Visionox (002387.CH) spent 23% of sales on R&D, or $635m.
As we noted in Part I, historically, the display industry has tended to focus on one major technology advance at a time, which, when proven commercially viable, became the immediate focus for large panel producers and a later focus for smaller producers unless it happened to be one that the smaller producer had chosen as their ‘go to’ R&D project, such as Sharp’s (6753.JP) development of IGZO that resulted in its lead in the technology starting back in late 2012.  However, with the number of new potential display technologies being developed, and the potentially shorter timelines to a final mass production decision, the decision for smaller panel producers is more toward developing new product categories using existing infrastructure than it is developing new display technology.  In some cases the development of new product categories does entail new equipment or process changes, but most new product categories can be based on existing process lines or minor modifications, with more research done on the development of a marketing strategy and developing new customer relationships than leading edge technology.
The display industry has in the past categorized display panel products as ‘large’ and ‘small’, essentially categorizing large as panels over 10” (diagonal) and small as anything under 10”, with ‘large’ categories broken down into monitors, notebooks, and TV panels, and the ‘small’ category representing primarily feature phones (inexpensive with few features) and smartphones.  Over the years those categories became more defined, especially as OLED technology became a significant part of the ‘small’ category.  With the first LCD display on a phone appearing in 1994 (see Figure 5), LCD panel producers increased LCD display size, colors, and quality until OLED smartphones displays became a new category for ‘small’ displays back in 2005, although all small OLED displays were ‘rigid’ in that they were based on a glass substrate.  That changed in 2010 when Samsung Display released the 1st flexible OLED display used in the Galaxy Note Edge and only 4 years later when Samsung released the first commercial foldable smartphone display, the Galaxy Z Fold.
The timelines between these technology milestones continues to contract, which makes the R&D process even more critical to both large and small panel producers, with Figure 4 representing only small panel displays.  Large panel displays have undergone similar technology changes and now face a multitude of potential game changing display technologies that are at various stages of development toward commercialization.  With only a few panel producers able to spend the R&D dollars necessary to examine all of those potential display technologies, smaller panel producers are taking the ‘road less traveled’ and building out new display applications such as automotive or ultra high-resolution displays, especially as more generic panel categories see declining prices.  We expect this ‘bifurcation’ in the display space to continue as Samsung Display, LG Display (LPL), and BOE (200725.CH) push technological boundaries, and smaller panel producers more toward niche product development, with the pace of change in both regards, continuing to increase. 
In Part III we look at large panel display technologies, their timelines, and the new display technologies being developed.  Stay tuned
​

Based on the dire headlines in the display trade press, focused on massive utilization cuts at LCD panel producers, we were expecting very depressing results from producers in August.  “Lowest utilization levels in history”, and similar stories set the tone for disastrous shipment numbers for panel producers in August and we played along mentally preparing for the worst.  As it turns out both from a sales standpoint and a shipment standpoint, August was not nearly as catastrophic as we thought, with large panel combined shipments declining only 1.3% m/m although down 18.1% y/y.  August large panel LCD sales declined 5.7%, while prices dropped 5.2% for the month, which indicates that the impact of the shipment decline was partially offset by an improvement in mix ASP.
The shipment breakdown in terms of application was even more antithetical to industry chatter, with TV shipments up 7.6% m/m and now up 7.1% y/y, the only major panel category that is above last year’s shipment levels.  While the peak and subsequent decline in TV panel prices happened earlier than the cycle with IT panels (monitors, notebooks, and tablets), much of the recent industry chatter concerning utilization cuts was focused on Gen 8 fabs, the mainstay for the production of TV panels, and while IT panels can also be produced on Gen 8 lines, the focus on utilization cuts at Gen 8 fabs would have tilted TV shipments more toward lower shipment levels.
Notebook shipments declined 10.1% m/m and 41.9% y/y and as monitor panel shipments did not peak until December of last year, the y/y comparisons will likely remain weak and while monitor shipments are certainly below any month in 2021 they are still above the lows of 2020 when the pandemic began.  Monitor shipments declined 8.4% m/m and declined 25.3% y/y in August, while tablet shipments increased by 2.5% m/m and declined 3.1% y/y, seeming to hold shipment levels relatively consistent this year.  On a regional basis, while South Korean producers saw the biggest shipment decline m/m in August in terms of revenue (-8.2%), it is hard to disaggregate both Samsung Display’s (pvt) and LG Display’s (LPL) large panel capacity reduction plans from the effect of utilization cuts.  Taiwan saw a 6.7% reduction in panel revenue, a bit more in line with the industry m/m revenue decline of 5.7%, while Chinese producers, where much of the utilization attention has been focused, saw a 4.0% revenue reduction m/m.  On a y/y basis Taiwan was down 55.9%, Korea down 9.8%, Japan down 22.1% and China down37.6% against the combined industry sales being down 37.0%.  For reference, the only panel producer that had a positive m/m sales ROC was HKC (+13.1%), although still down 11.4% y/y.  Samsung Display also had a positive August sales ROC but it is likely only from large panel lines that are in the wind-down process and represents only 0.19% of industry large panel LCD sales.
IT panel shipments did decline in August, some of which we attribute to utilization cuts, but we are even more suspect about the extent of the utilization cuts made at panel producers in August than we were before, given the better shipment results for TV panels.  We expect that much of the doom and gloom came from panel producers themselves who embellished the utilization cuts a bit to create an atmosphere where panel buyers might be concerned that they would be unable to secure even the reduced quotas they would need for August and September.  While this sounds quite cynical, it would not be the first time such a strategy was employed.  If our cynicism proves correct in September it leads us to see a longer cyclical downturn for the industry than if panel producers really made the very deep cuts across all company fabs that were hinted last month.  Hopefully that is not the case as we had anticipated that panel producers would really bite the bullet in August to tighten the overall LCD large panel market, but it looks like that was not the case.
 

​As the display industry matures, display production becomes increasingly application specific, with broad segment headers like ‘TV’ or ‘IT’ becoming anachronistic, and sub-categories becoming the only way panel producers can differentiate themselves from each other.  There are many ‘large panel’ and ‘small panel’ display producers, but even if you are a leader in a particular panel application, the competition can be quite intense and the inherent cyclicality of the industry, devastating to profitability.  As that cyclicality peaks, as it did in July of last year, panel producers try to narrow their focus on those applications or processes that carry the highest premiums.  While this is a viable strategy in the near-term, LCD fabs are not always designed or equipped to make those changes, which means capital cost and becoming part of a queue for equipment delivery.  In some cases, by the time the equipment is delivered and the production changes are made, that particular application niche becomes crowed with other producers and premiums disappear, which belies the strategy’s positive effect on profitability.
The alternative is to approach the panel business as one that anticipates rather than follows the application trends, and while this is a seemingly obvious path, it presents its own challenges and risks.  First, the research involved in advancing display technology usually starts on a small scale, typically a lab project that takes an idea and produces a small scale ‘proof of concept’ device or process that either solves existing display technology limitations, or makes a step toward a new basic display technology or ‘flavor’ of an existing one.  This is a tricky stage as the researchers will likely aggressively promote the merits of the idea, citing a variety of reasons why and how it can scale to a mass production level, while process engineers must build a model that can quantify the cost, potential scale problems, and the availability of the equipment necessary to build out such capacity, with product marketing trying to figure out whether there is or will be a market for the application best served by the technology and whether it is sustainable enough to justify the cost.
If a project makes it through the POC stage, it will typically move to the construction of a pilot line, a small line that gives process engineers a taste of how the scale model will transfer to production on a physical basis.  Such lines are variable in that they usually undergo modifications as process bottlenecks and problems occur, with panel producers working with equipment vendors as to the feasibility, cost, and timelines needed to bring up a full mass production line.  If the display process seems practical, a few samples will be made on the pilot line to be shown to key customers to see if they spark enough interest to validate the expansion to mass production.
To this point, the cost of the project is typically buried in R&D expenses, however if the project seems practical and there is customer interest, C-level decision acceptance of moving the model to mass production status begins a far more substantial capital budget process.  Given that the cost of even a small mass production display line can cost hundreds of millions to billions, the risks involved in such a decision can exceed the resources of many panel producers or stress the level of profitability across the entire company.  What makes this even more difficult currently is that there are a number of emerging display technologies that are vying for capital, all hoping to become the basis for the display supply chain over the next few years, which increases the risk of picking the wrong technology or application even higher than in past years for smaller panel producers, and spreading R&D too thin for larger panel producers.
LCD technology has been the basis for the display industry for many years and advances in LCD process technology continue to be made however as that technology has matured it becomes more difficult for those advances to be substantial , which forces LCD panel producers to look for premiums by finding niche products where competition is less onerous.  Years ago LTPS (Low temperature Poly-Silicon) was the TFT backplane process that was touted as the replacement for a-Si (Amorphous Silicon) that had been used since LCD production began, and many panel producers converted TFT lines to the new technology to capitalize on its benefits, especially in small panel production.  This transition took years for many panel producers, so those who anticipated the transition were able to capitalize on the premiums afforded the new technology.
In 2012 Sharp (6753.JP) began production of a new TFT backplane technology based on IGZO (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) that promised to improve LCD backplane technology once again, and while this technology was more difficult to master from a process standpoint, larger panel producers began to adopt IGZO for specific panel applications, while small producers were still working toward LTPS adoption.  In 2014 Apple (AAPL) commissioned the use of another TFT backplane technology in the Apple Watch Series 4, and while this technology, which is a combination of LTPD and IGZO, is to be Apple’s ‘goto’ mobile display technology, there are only a few panel producers able to produce the technology, with Samsung Display (pvt) the only current commercial provider for smartphones and similar devices. 
While Apple will likely have 2 or 3 LTPO suppliers in 2023, smaller panel producers will be years behind, with many still working toward adopting IGZO, with the timeline between each iteration of this one aspect of LCD technology becoming shorter.  Without the most current backplane technology smaller producers will find it difficult to gain access to major CE brands and will be forced to focus on more generic panel technologies, which are far more cyclical.  As noted this is just one aspect of display technology and one that is rarely in the public eye, so early development cycles were able to be long as demand from consumers was relatively minor, but as ‘front of display’ technologies, such as OLED, began to gain public traction, the time-to-market for each new display technology ‘leap’ became compressed.
In Part II of “Alternatives” we look at some of the more recent display technologies that are vying for R&D and capacity expansion dollars and how smaller panel producers are being forced to adopt the ‘niche-or-die’ strategy mentioned above.  Stay tuned.
 

​Samsung Display (pvt), an affiliate of Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), and the world’s largest producer of small panel OLED, has sold roughly 2,000 patents to Chinastar (pvt) a subsidiary of China’s TCL (000100.CH), a company in which Samsung has a 12.3% stake.  That stake was acquired as part of the 8/31/20 sale of its 60% stake in its Gen 8.5 LCD fab in Suzhou to Chinastar for $1.08b US.  In the patent package were 577 US patents owned by Samsung Display and to put that number in perspective Samsung Display has 18,860 US patents and 3,968 US patent applications, with 325 applications and 1,731 with “Liquid Crystal Display” in the title.  The price of the sale, which could have been done piecemeal, was not disclosed, although it will eventually show up in SDC’s financials, and given the company’s new revelation as to compensating those who were responsible for the IP when it is monetized, more detail will eventually show up in the footnotes.
As Samsung Display made the decision to end the production of large panel LCD displays back in 2020 and has slowly sold or shuttered all of its large panel LCD fabs, selling line equipment and converting some to small and potentially large panel OLED production, along with the company’s OLED derivative. QD/OLED, monetizing these IP assets are a logical path for SDC.  TCL/Chinastar will now have a broader IP platform under which it can more conclusively defend itself during IP litigation, while typical agreements call for the previous patent owner to be grandfathered against new litigation.
The question however, is whether Chinastar will use the extended portfolio against Chinese rival BOE (200725.CH), the largest panel producer in China, as a tool to limit BOE’s competitive ability, a practice relatively common in the display space and certainly in the CE space, and one that gains momentum as the financials of panel producers deteriorate.  The problem here would be that litigation against BOE by Chinastar could be taken as a tacit challenge from Samsung Display and potentially from Samsung Electronics, who purchases large panel LCD product from both Chinastar and BOE, given the links back to both Samsung entities.  For now things are quiet, but we expect  TCL’s lawyers are review all of the new IP to see if it pertains to existing litigation and whether it can generate new legal challenges going forward.

​While it is hard to believe that it took the Taiwan Taoyuan District Court essentially three years to make a decision, said court has ruled that former panel producer Chunghwa Picture Tubes (defunct) is bankrupt.  CPT, a once robust panel producer generating over $500m in quarterly sales back in the late 2000’s, found itself unable to compete, with sales down to $13m/q by the end of 2018, along with a heavy debt burden incurred during the construction of the company’s 2nd G6 LCD fab and its investment in a Chinese subsidiary.   
According to court documents CPT  had total liabilities at the end of 2021 totaling $1.372b US which far exceeded the value of its assets (not provided but were ~$772m at the end of 2019), and the court sponsored auction of the company’s plants and associated building, which was priced at $206.6m (base price) received no offers.
The court has appointed an accountant and two lawyers to oversee the bankruptcy proceedings with a creditor’s meeting scheduled for the end of October.  The company’s largest shareholder is Tatung (2371.TT), a Taiwan-based manufacturer of PCs LCD TVs, and appliances, holds a 39.7% stake in CPT, along with eChem Solutions (4749.TT) and a variety of smaller stock and note holders, a sad demise for a company that at one time held an 8% share of the global small panel LCD market.

Shenzhen, China is the 4th largest urban city in China, with a direct population of 12.6m and an urban population of 17.6m, about the size of New York City and LA together.  The government of Shenzhen has locked down a portion of the city due to the discovery of 11 cases of COVID-19 (9 symptomatic), closing all rail and metro stations and restricting residents to one person per family able to purchase groceries or other essentials every two days, as long as they have a negative PCR test within the last 24 hours.  All businesses in the Futian and Luonu Districts have been ordered closed, although take-out restaurants are still open, but food deliveries are only allowed to be made to community lock-boxes and then picked up by residents.  Most important is the closure of the CBD (Central Business District) in the city, a 2.4 mi2 area that is home to the city government, and a wide variety of major businesses, including one of the city’s biggest electronics retailers.
To get some understanding of the size of the two districts that were closed, they are the equivalent of the size of mid-town Manhattan, in order to contain 11 COVID cases, and the cites of Xianghe (just under 400,000 residents) and Zhuozhou (~380,000 residents), were shut down last week after a total of nine cases were discovered.  Both cities are within 50 miles of China’s capital city of Beijing where residents are required to get a PCR test every three days in order to ride public transportation and enter most public buildings.  We wonder how that might work in NYC…wonder who would be checking PCR test results for those in Figure 2… 

​Innolux (3481.TT) is one of almost all large panel LCD producers that have lowered utilization rates as the display industry finds itself with high inventory levels and decreasing demand.  Given that panel producers do not want to fire workers that have been trained only to hire and train new workers when utilization rates move up, the company has announced a new ‘Unified Vacation Plan’ for employees that designates September 12th and 13th as ‘vacation days’, along with October 5th, 6th, and 7th, with the payroll system deducting said ‘vacation days’ from worker’s pay, which has caused workers to complain to the media and the Taiwan Ministry of Labor.
The Ministry of Labor seems to believe that the Innolux leave announcements ‘clearly violate Labor Standards Law’ and put the company in position to receive a maximum fine of NT$1,000,000, which is the equivalent of ~$33,000 US$.  The average engineer in Taiwan earns $85,300/year, which comes to $234/day and assuming all 52,600 Innolux employees are forced to take the 5 additional unpaid vacation days, the savings to the company would be ~$62.5m, which makes a $33k fine seem a bit insignificant.  Of course it does little for company/employee relations but with the outlook cloudy for the next few months we expect management would not be distressed if a few employees left for greener pastures.

The CEO of Samsung Display (pvt), affiliate of Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), indicated that it will be building a Gen 8 OLED fab in its production complex in Asan, South Korea, designed for the production of IT OLED panels.  As we have noted previously (8/16/21, 06/30/22,5/26/22), the construction of such a facility has been rumored, particularly as SDC has been developing specialized OLED deposition equipment with tool supplier Ulvac (6728.JP) that will help overcome the physical limitations that restrict the use of fine metal masks to Gen 6 OLED fabs.  Fine metal masks are used to pattern OLED emitter materials on rigid or flexible substrates but begin to sag, causing defects, when they are used above Gen 6.  The new process that SDC is developing places the deposition chamber and the masks vertically, rather than horizontally, keeping gravity from deforming the masks.
We expect the fab will be built in the L8 building, where SDC formerly had two large LCD fabs, producing up to 350,000 sheets/month at its peak, or the equivalent of 25.2m 55” LCD TV panels/year.  SDC closed the first line in 2019, sold the equipment to Chinese LCD module producer Shenzhen Efonlong (pvt), and since built the production line for the company’s QD/OLED display products in that location.  While no specific details about the new fab’s capacity were given, the company is expected to begin production on the new line in 2024, which will improve the efficiency of OLED panel production for IT products (monitors and notebooks), which are currently being produced on less efficient Gen 6 OLED fabs at SDC.  This would coincide with Apple’s (AAPL) rumored plans to move the iPad from LCD to OLED displays in that year.
The OLED IT category is small relative to OLED smartphones, watches, and TVs, but represents a less competitive category and rapid growth. Current estimates see OLED monitor revenue growing from $57m last year to over $200m this year, although that includes QD/OLED and OLED notebooks growing almost 40% in sales y/y and over 60% in units.  The chairman also indicated that SDC would be pursuing two forms of micro-displays, micro-OLED and micro-LED, neither of which comes as much of a surprise considering Samsung’s micro-LED commercial products are already available albeit at extremely high prices.  The indication was that the company will be in mass production of micro-displays in the 2024 year along with the Gen 8 OLED IT line, which musts some significant milestones for SDC over the two years.  While SDC management did not indicate the cost of these projects, the Gen 8 fab alone is estimated to cost between $2.3b and $3b, and we would expect that the OLED micro-displays would be produced on silicon, which would entail a dedicated production line. 
All in, these are big projects but necessary for SDC to maintain its leadership role in the RGB OLED space and compete for micro-LED commercialization with Chinese panel producers, who have also been making such investments.  While 2023 will be a year primarily dedicated to more traditional OLED products, which are increasingly influenced by macro factors, 2024 and 2025 will be years in which SDC is able to expand its display product line, particularly with new premium priced display products that will lessen its exposure to competition from Chinese panel producers.  There are still a large number of roadblocks to overcome but it is nice to have the backing of one of the world’s largest CE companies when it comes to taking such chances.

Given the fact that most CE devices have a display of some sort, and as the device category becomes more sophisticated the display tends to follow suit, and the display itself tends to be the single highest cost component in many CE devices.  As an example, the cost breakdown of components in the Samsung (005930.KS)  Galaxy Note Ultra 5G, one of Samsung’s flagship models that was released in August of 2020 had a component BOM of ~$468, and while the cost of the display included the 6.9” OLED screen, touch overlay, driver IC and cover glass, it was 19.6% of the component BOM, with only the entire cellular system, encompassing the 5G modem (both Sub6 and mmWave), 2G,3G, 4G systems and antenna modules costing more (20.8%), although we believe the display itself was still the largest share of the component BOM.  As such the display market is a key indicator as to both short-term and long-term trends in the consumer electronics space and we have looked at and maintain data display sales and shipments on a monthly basis since 2004 to help in understanding the prospects for a wide variety of companies that feed the CE supply chain.
As the industry contracts after hitting a peak in July of last year, we watch for signs that those factors that caused or are causing the decline are gaining or losing ground in order to gain some insight into when a bottom in the display cycle might be reached and what the momentum on the up cycle might look like.  The data, particularly charts, paint a picture that can give hints as to where the display industry will be in 3 months, six months, a year, or two years but the psychology behind what goes on in the display space is equally important and we try to provide an unbiased perspective to balance the data.  When we speak with industry professionals we try to understand their way of thinking, which can be diametrically opposed to our perspective, but our goal is to read through the corporate speak, technical gobbledygook, and blind optimism that pervades the industry and figure out the root of the conversation and real answers to questions.  We have no positive or negative bias toward the display space or the CE space as we get paid to provide information and not promote sponsored products, which we hope our readers understand and value.  So much for shameless self-promotion…
As we have noted, panel; producers finally began to realize that panel pricing was not going to go up forever and that what they hoped was going to be the ‘new normal’ was just another wave in a cyclical industry.  As we noted yesterday panel producers have begun to lower fab utilization rates for a number of reasons.  The first, demand has declined, and second, many panel prices have fallen below cash costs.  As demand rose in 2020 and the 1st half of 2021, as COVID changed consumer habits, brands embraced that demand but held on to consumer momentum far longer than necessary, and coupled with an underlying fear of not having enough components to meet future demand, brands built inventories past normal levels.  Now, with lower demand from consumers as COVID wanes and inflation rears its ugly head, those inventory levels are the third leg of the stool forcing producers to lower utilization levels to work down that inventory.
Panel producers began this process in May and have since lowered utilization rates from the low to mid 90% level to the mid 70% level and while in yesterday’s China LCD Production Utilization Chart we left July industry large panel sales flat, we now have added actual July data, which indicates that large panel sales in China decreased by 8.5% in July, giving some indication as to the effectiveness of the most recent utilization cuts in China.  As China fabs generated 47.3% of total industry large panel LCD sales, the utilization cuts made on the Mainland have a significant effect on the global display supply situation, hence our focus on China during this part of the down cycle.

On a global basis, as panel producers in other regions have also cut utilization, July global large panel sales were down 4.3% m/m and down 35.7% y/y to the lowest point since May 2020.  July large panel shipments were down 12.1% m/m and down 16.9% y/y, and as shipments declined at a faster rate than sales, overall large panel ASP’s rose by 8.9% to $81.73, the first m/m increase since February.   All product categories saw shipment declines as shown below.  If we average the sales/month for this year, the reduction in sales between June and July would be the equivalent of 1.2 days of sales, a rather mediocre push toward reducing panel inventory, which we believe to be ~15+ days above normal, with some of that sales reduction from weaker overall demand.  While we expect the additional cuts made this month will impact sales further in August and help the industry to absorb more than a day or two’s worth of inventory, our expectations for how long such utilization cuts might last are now extended into 4Q and beyond.

​[1] Includes Notebooks, Monitors & Tablets

Before we go further we need to quantify what we mean by ‘better’.  For the first time in many months actual panel pricing (in some categories) came in better than our forecasts, hence the ‘better’ in the title, but we also have to qualify that in noting that the aggregate large panel price is currently at its lowest point in the last three years and you would have to go back as far as February 2014 to find an aggregate price lower than current.  With that said, we look at panel pricing for August against that backdrop and while TV panel pricing came in within our forecasted range, IT panels, particularly notebooks and monitors, did a bit better than our expectations.  Again, qualifications are necessary as monitor and notebook panel pricing in August was still down 5.5% and down 4.6% respectively, but given that those are the smallest monthly declines since March/April, the glass is half full.
We expect that the utilization reductions have tightened the panel market to a degree, and panel producers are a bit more picky about the profitability of projects that they take on for customers as they have less capacity to fill, which pushes us to look at least a bit more favorably at pricing in September, and while we still expect the aggregate large panel price to decline between 2.9% and 3.5%, the momentum to the downside has lessened.  The question to us is whether there is a seasonal improvement to demand driving the ‘improvement’ or is this more of a drive by panel producers to avoid unprofitable jobs that they might have taken on in the past in order to maintain a good relationship with large customers.  We expect the power issues in China might also have a bit of psychological impact on buyers who still need to meet quotas, albeit lower ones, and are willing to negotiate a bit more to ensure volumes are met, but we expect things will cool down in China by the end of the month and buyers will remain in the driver’s seat.
One metric we watch, which can be seen in Figure 7, is the m/m rate of change, and while still negative the ROC has begun to improve, a sign that at least some pricing pressure is being alleviated.  That said, if we look  at Figure 8, it can be seen that pre-COVID, the m/m rate of change was considerably smaller than what has been seen since late 2019, and while the direction has certainly improved, stability is what we look for to establish a basis for a sustained recovery.  We expect such stability will not come during periods of low utilization and will take some time even after utilization rates return to more normalized levels as those changes will destabilize panel pricing for a short period until a more realistic balance between brands and panel producers is achieved.  While we are not want to give timelines for the industry, we would expect the first point at which a stable balance between both sides of the equation could occur would be late 1Q or early 2Q 2023.  Lots of things would still have to fall in place to achieve that timeline, but we see that as the first point at which it could occur.