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SEOUL (Reuters) - Chinese flat screen makers, once dismissed as second-class players in the global LCD market, are drawing envious looks from big names such as LG Display Co Ltd and Samsung.A man walks out of the headquarters of LG Display in Seoul, October 20, 2011. REUTERS/Jo Yong-Hak

While the Korean giants were busy developing next-generation organic light emitting diode (OLED) TVs, little-known Chinese companies have started selling a type of display that are sharper than the standard LCD and cheaper than OLED.

Until last year, the UHD market had been almost non-existent, with just 33,000 sets sold in the 200 million-unit LCD TV market. Since then, shipments have soared around 20-fold, thanks to China, data from research firm IHS shows.

But its slow introduction into the market and austere prices have thrown open a window of opportunity for UHD makers, in this case Chinese companies like BOE Technology Group Co Ltd and TCL Corp’s LCD unit CSOT.

By comparison, Japanese flat-screen pioneer Sharp Corp reported a razor-thin 0.5 percent margin. LG Display, the world’s No.1 LCD maker, posted a 5.6 percent margin.

Samsung Display, a unit of Samsung Electronics, had a margin of 13 percent, the biggest in the industry. But excluding its fledging OLED business, its LCD margin is between 3 and 7 percent, according to a Bernstein forecast.

“Even with some expansion of the Chinese panel suppliers we do expect Samsung and LG Display to stay dominant and continue production in LCD,” said Sweta Dash, director at IHS.

BOE Technology is now planning to raise 46 billion yuan ($7.5 billion) in the biggest Chinese equity offering this year, to build panel production lines and increase its stake in its LCD venture BOE Display Technology.

The escalating coronavirus crisis is impacting production at display panel factories located in the semi-quarantined city of Wuhan, China, spurring a significant near-term reduction in the global supply of panels used in liquid crystal display televisions (LCDs) and other products.

The five factories in the city producing liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels will experience near-term slowdowns in production compared to expected levels, according to IHS Markit technology research, now a part of Informa Tech.

With the situation evolving quickly, IHS Markit technology research is still assessing the magnitude of the supply shortfall on multiple display types and markets. However, leading Chinese panel makers stated they believe that total capacity utilization for all LCD fabs in the country could fall by at least 10 percent and perhaps by more than 20 percent during the month of February.

With China expected to own 55 percent of global display manufacturing capacity in 2020, the immediate impact of the production reduction has been a worldwide decrease in availability and an increase in pricing for LCD-TV panels. This has resulted in turmoil throughout the display supply chain as suppliers and purchasers alike scramble to adjust to swiftly changing market conditions.

The leading Chinese suppliers of LCD panels for TVs, notebook PCs and PC monitors now are planning to raise panel prices more aggressively. For example, the price for an open-cell LCD-TV panel was originally expected to rise by $1 or $2 per month in February. However, the actual increase may be $3 to $5 for the month.

Beyond the immediate production impact at these facilities, the coronavirus is also likely to trigger delays in the ramp-up of manufacturing at new display fabs during the first half of 2020. This will reduce overall panel availability during the next few months. It also could result in further panel supply tightness as TV display buyers hasten the pace of their panel purchases to build stockpiles for future shortfalls.

While major panel makers are rightly concerned about the coronavirus’s impact on consumer sales, demand for their products from TV makers has actually increased. TV makers are pulling in their panel demand and sometimes double-booking orders to shore up their inventories. The panel maker indicated that the demand surge for orders delivered in February is as large as 10 percent above the previous demand forecast.

LCD panel makers outsource much of the production of such modules. However, production at several key third-party module suppliers has now ceased, impacting panel production severely throughout the country. Key module supplier SkyTech is sharply reducing production until mid-February.

Panel makers maintain their own captive LCD module factories. However, these operations are also facing production bottlenecks amid the coronavirus crisis.

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