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Charm Engineering Gets New Orders for AOI and Laser Trimming Equipment Despite Recent Convictions of Some Management
March 08, 2020
Korea’s Charm Engineering, which provides AOI (Automated Optical Inspection) and repair tools for LCD displays and laser trimming tools used in the production of flexible and foldable OLED displays, continued to sign new contracts, particularly with Chinese panel producers even as other display equipment suppliers see little activity. In July of 2019 the former CEO and a number of VPs were convicted of embezzlement, given prison terms of 1.5 years, 2 years of probation, and fined over $600m US$, after the courts estimated that the damages to the company totaled over $9.3m US$. Even though the company’s former management was found to be dialect , new fabs need inspection equipment to improve yield and proven laser cutter used for foldable displays are a necessary part of the new process, so getting the equipment on the line is more important than any issues with company management. BOE, Samsung Display and Visionox should be ordering equipment to support their expansion plans in the near-term.
Table 1: Charm Engineering Announced Contracts – 2H ’19 to Present
Charm Engineering Gets New Orders for AOI and Laser Trimming Equipment Despite Recent Convictions of Some Management
March 08, 2020
Korea’s Charm Engineering, which provides AOI (Automated Optical Inspection) and repair tools for LCD displays and laser trimming tools used in the production of flexible and foldable OLED displays, continued to sign new contracts, particularly with Chinese panel producers even as other display equipment suppliers see little activity. In July of 2019 the former CEO and a number of VPs were convicted of embezzlement, given prison terms of 1.5 years, 2 years of probation, and fined over $600m US$, after the courts estimated that the damages to the company totaled over $9.3m US$. Even though the company’s former management was found to be dialect , new fabs need inspection equipment to improve yield and proven laser cutter used for foldable displays are a necessary part of the new process, so getting the equipment on the line is more important than any issues with company management. BOE, Samsung Display and Visionox should be ordering equipment to support their expansion plans in the near-term.
Table 1: Charm Engineering Announced Contracts – 2H ’19 to Present
Source: SCMR LLC, Company Data
We recently noted that SDC had chosen to use ink-jet printing equipment from affiliate SEMES over US supplier Kateeva, despite a better success profile with the Kateeva tool. We have also noted that Samsung had been shopping SEMES itself, given the poor results the affiliate has had over the last few years, eventually closing the company save the ink-jet tool division. It seems that SDC is now finding alternatives to SEMES color filter tools, which it had used in the past, signing two contracts with South Korean color filter tool vendor FNS Technology () for a total of $68.2m, extending from1/1/20 to 8/31/20, which gives some hints as to SDC’s QD/OLED production timeline and will set up FNS with a strong sales year.