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May Large Panel LCD Sales Rose 4.4% Sequentially and 55.5% Y/Y
 
Large panel LCD shipments declined by 0.3% sequentially but were up 2.7% Y/Y.  AUO jumped 10.7% sequentially in sales, and both HKC) and CHOT were up 13% sequentially. BOE and LG Display were flat and up 4.3% sequentially respectively, weighing a bit on the totals.  Samsung Display was flat for the month.  
 
Large panel unit volumes have been relatively flat this year, with only a 2.6% spread between high and low, excluding the one month unit volume spike in March, which increased the spread to 8.5%, however sales have increased 12.9% across the industry, with rising panel prices accounting for much of the sales outperformance.   
2H21 shipments are typically 13.0% (5 yr. avg.) higher than 1H, although removing 2020 (COVID-19) brings the average down to 10.2%, indicating that large panel sales will increase in 2H by considerably more than that amount, and that large panel prices continue to rise.   While we do expect large panel prices to continue to rise into 3Q, we believe the rate of increase is slowing as demand, particularly for TV slows in North America and China.  Fig. 3 shows TV panel pricing and ROC, with the ROC trending down and actual aggregate pricing falling below the trend line.  We expect that lower panel pricing ROC trend to continue in 3Q as demand for TV slows and demand for IT products levels off.  While there will be short-term anomalies, we expect that trend to continue through the end of the year.