Finally…
As we have noted a number of times, Royole (pvt), once the company that beat display industry giants to the development of a commercial flexible OLED display, was forced into bankruptcy by its unpaid employees, who are owed over $14m in salary and unfunded equity. The company’s remaining assets, which include almost 100,000 m2 of land, 235,000 m2 of building space, and $62.5m in equipment, went to a court-sponsored auction in December, with an asking price of $172m.
Unfortunately there were lots of lookers but no bids and subsequent attempts led to the same results, however it seems that the latest auction received a bid from a single petitioner for $70.5m, which seems to have been accepted. The identity of the bidder has yet to be revealed, but there is considerable speculation that it is HKC, one of China’s four large panel LCD producers. HKC has little or no OLED R&D, so there is the possibility that they are looking to enter OLED space, although one would expect that more modern equipment would be desired. They could sell off or scrap the more specialized OLED equipment and build out an OLED fab themselves or keep what can be used for LCD and create another large or small panel fab in the Royole space. In either case it puts an end to what was once a highly speculative company that raised over $1.3b in debt and equity capital and was valued at $6b at its peak. At least the employees can get paid.
Unfortunately there were lots of lookers but no bids and subsequent attempts led to the same results, however it seems that the latest auction received a bid from a single petitioner for $70.5m, which seems to have been accepted. The identity of the bidder has yet to be revealed, but there is considerable speculation that it is HKC, one of China’s four large panel LCD producers. HKC has little or no OLED R&D, so there is the possibility that they are looking to enter OLED space, although one would expect that more modern equipment would be desired. They could sell off or scrap the more specialized OLED equipment and build out an OLED fab themselves or keep what can be used for LCD and create another large or small panel fab in the Royole space. In either case it puts an end to what was once a highly speculative company that raised over $1.3b in debt and equity capital and was valued at $6b at its peak. At least the employees can get paid.
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