Iljin Display is hoping to return to profitability from notebook and MiniLED markets.
The company announced that it will offer shares to secure 20 billion won in funding. 10 billion won will be spent on facilities related to notebook components, the company said.
Out of the 10 billion won, 60 billion won will be spent on increasing its production capacity for metal mesh touch for notebooks. Metal mesh touch screen panels use silver or copper to make the touch sensor circuits transparent.
Ijin Display seems to be betting on its customer Samsung Electronics applying more touch screen panels to its notebook line-up.
Touch screen panel accounts for 80% of Iljin Display’s sales but earnings have nosedived recently. This is because Samsung is using more on-cell panels over touch screen panels for its smartphones.
Iljin Display’s touch division posted sales of 221.5 billion won in 2017; this has fallen to 178.2 billion won in 2018 and 80.1 billion won in 2019. The company’s total sales in 2017 was 251.2 billion won but this dropped to 206.3 billion won in 2018 and 95.6 billion won in 2019. Last year the company posted an operating loss of 30.4 billion won.
The company is also planning to invest 3 billion won into sapphire ingot and wafer. This is aimed at the MiniLED market. MiniLED uses LED chips in size between 100 to 100 micrometers.
Samsung is planning to launch MiniLED TVs and Apple is planning to use MiniLED for iPad Pro next year. Both companies procure the LED chips from Taiwan’s Epistar. Epistar is a customer of Iljin Display for sapphire ingot and wafer.
Iljin will spend 2.5 billion won in each quarter of next year to expand its facilities.
Out of the remaining 10 billion won from the share offering, 5 billion won will be used to buy materials and for operations of its liquid crystal display (LCD) and organic light emitting diode (OLED) businesses. The other 5 billion won will be used to payback debts.
Iljin is planning to issue 6.15 million shares for the 200 billion won.
