LG Display cuts quarter of exec staff

Struggling South Korean display maker LG Display underwent some heavy-duty reorganization on Oct. 4 involving moves to let go of one-fourth of the executive staff as a part of its plans to minimize the LCD business in favor of the OLED panel division.

There are currently 118 executives on the LG Display workforce. The staff working with the Chief Technology Officer was also reshuffled, with the team being split into two; one for R&D on foundational technology and another for display R&D.

“These measures are being taken to allow for faster and more efficient decision-making in order to improve our core competitiveness,” said one LGD official.

The reshuffling comes less than a month after the display maker appointed Chung Ho-young as CEO in September. Chung had said the firm would continue to receive voluntary retirement until the end of this year in order to pursue normalization as soon as possible.

Due to a supply glut in LCDs that led to lower prices, LG Display incurred an operating profit of 500.7 billion won in the first half of this year. It is now estimated to have hit 300 billion won of deficit in the third quarter as well, indicating that the firm’s annual losses could reach as high as 1 trillion won.

“The problem is that unlike in the past, LCDs are no longer an industry of the future. It doesn’t haven’t any room for further growth,” said an industry watcher.

Hit by also the growing presence of Chinese makers, local LCD makers have turned to reducing or shutting down their LCD production lines.
"A more pressing challenge is to make OLEDs dramatically more affordable to turn them into game-changers,” said another market source.

The Elec is South Korea’s No.1 tech news platform.