Display Business ‘Underappreciated’ in Applied Materials Portfolio, Says CFO

Though the display business for Applied Materials is at “a cyclical low as we sit today,” senior management is planning for a return “to a more attractive point in the investment cycle in 2022,” Chief Financial Officer Dan Durn told a Wells Fargo investor conference Wednesday. The company supplies OLED vapor-deposition equipment and services to Chinese panel makers and can be a bellwether of display industry health. “We're seeing green shoots and we think the bias is towards the upside as those green shoots take hold,” said Durn. It's “prudent to set expectations” that the display improvement “materializes” in two years, “but if it happens faster, we'll certainly benefit from that,” he said. Display will “very quickly” become “a good adder to growth, revenue, earnings, cash flow and I just think it's an underappreciated part of the portfolio,” he said.