AMAT's Display Revenues Rebound: Is it a Sign of Stability?

Applied Materials’ AMAT display and adjacent segment has experienced rapid growth in the past two quarters. In the third quarter of fiscal 2025, the display and adjacent segment grew 4.8% year over year, while it jumped 44.7% year over year in the previous quarter.

The non-GAAP operating margin of this segment was 23.6%. This improvement is on the back of expanding adoption of organic light emitting diodes (OLED) screens in consumer devices. As the demand for advanced televisions, high-resolution displays for smartphones, laptops, monitors and tablets keeps pouring in, AMAT’s display segment will keep gaining traction.

Advanced form factors like thin, light, curved and flexible displays, and new use cases like augmented and virtual reality will also push AMAT’s display segment. AMAT expects its fourth-quarter 2025 display and adjacent revenues to come at $350 million, indicating a significant 66% year-over-year growth.

This growth is supported by Applied Materials’ MAX OLED technology, which will enable it to create large OLED screens known for their superior brightness, flexibility, and durability on much larger glass panels. The technology uses a maskless pixel-deposition process that enhances brightness up to threefold, resolution up to 2.5 times, while keeping the energy use down by more than 30%, all the while increasing the display lifespan up to five times.

How Competitors Fare Against AMAT Stock

Companies like Universal Display Corporation OLED and Kopin Corporation KOPN are two large players in the OLED market that develop phosphorescent OLED technology, micro-OLED displays and hold a vast portfolio of OLED-related patents.

Universal Display Corporation's strong patent portfolio has helped the company acquire several large customers, creating significant licensing revenues. Universal Display Corporation’s customers like Samsung, LG Display, BOE Technology, Visionox and Tianma have huge market share, which drives volumes.

Kopin Corporation specializes in ultra-high-brightness microdisplays for AR/VR, defense, enterprise, and industrial applications. While neither Universal Display Corporation nor Kopin Corporation directly competes with AMAT in equipment manufacturing, they hold patents for the underlying technology, making their customers direct competitors to AMAT.

AMAT’s Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

Shares of Applied Materials have declined 1.8% year to date compared with the Electronics - Semiconductors industry’s growth of 14.2%.

From a valuation standpoint, Applied Materials trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 4.27X, lower than the industry’s average of 8.5X.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Applied Materials’ fiscal 2025 and 2026 earnings implies year-over-year growth of 8.32% and 1.54%, respectively. The estimates for fiscal 2026 and 2027 have been revised downward in the past seven days.

Applied Materials currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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