ams OSRAM has initiated a substantial restructuring of microLED development, with more than 500 employees affected. Remaining activities will focus on microLED technology for own automotive applications.
“The industry dynamics in our LED markets have changed with cancellation of the microLED cornerstone project. We adjust our strategy accordingly and continue to strengthen investments in the soon biggest LED market segment – automotive – which is to grow structurally for years to come. We intend to step out of the 8-inch factory and focus our microLED development on automotive needs for accelerating our path towards delivering truly positive free cash flow in 2025. We showed year-on-year growth in Q1 on a like-for-like basis in a difficult environment driven by structural growth in automotive and some cyclical recovery. The promising mid-term growth prospects of all our core businesses that we are focusing on in automotive, industrial, medical, as well as selected consumer applications, are intact,” said Aldo Kamper, CEO of ams OSRAM.
Cornerstone development project stopped
On 28 February 2024, ams OSRAM announced that a lead-customer had stopped the cornerstone microLED development project. The company initiated restructuring its microLED related development activities in both Malaysia and Germany to a remaining minimum core development for mainly proprietary use in future automotive products, such as advanced, high-pixelated forward lighting solutions. In total, more than 500 employees at the respective sites combined are affected. Some freed-up resources are reallocated to further strengthen the company’s market leadership position in the automotive LED market, which is poised to soon become the single largest segment in the LED market according to latest market research. This new view of the market also suggests that the superior features of advanced, high-performance microLED based displays will primarily play a role in several smaller applications that also will scale slower and later than expected previously.
In case a new lead customer commits in a timely manner to fund dedicated developments for specific applications, the company may continue a more substantial microLED development in an essentially cash flow and EBIT neutral manner. For 2025, the company expects upon implementation of these decisions significant improvements of cash flow of more than EUR 100 million and adjusted EBIT of around EUR 100 million, respectively, which is to be seen in comparison to a continuation of the cornerstone project according to the previous plan.