Universal Display stock falls after revenue miss but analysts defend long-term opportunity

Shares of Universal Display Corp. are down 1.1% in premarket trading Friday after the company missed revenue expectations the prior afternoon. The company, which make organic light-emitting diode technologies that go into smartphone and other screens, pointed to a "soft premium smartphone market" in the first half of the year but said it expected "a pick-up in OLED panel demand" in the second half. Analysts weighed in on the results Friday, including Evercore ISI's C.J. Muse, who rates the stock at outperform with a $150 price target. "While Universal Display's results for 1Q...and revised guide for all of CY18 were disappointing, the key is that this report should represent a bottom," Muse wrote. "The good news is we believe this will be the last cut and that the long-term story is mostly unchanged. While the Apple OLED super-cycle obviously did not materialize, this fact alone does not suggest the excellent benefits of OLED vs. LCD will not be realized in handsets in the coming years." Needham analyst James Ricchiuti lowered his price target to $130 from $170 but said that new revenue-recognition standards negatively impacted results. "With signs increasingly pointing to a 2H recovery in the OLED market, we believe investors have another opportunity purchase OLED shares at sharply lower prices before the impact of next wave of OLED capacity, notably in China, begins ramping next year," he wrote. Universal Display shares are down 47% so far this year, while the S&P 500 has fallen 1.6%.