One of the biggest talking points in the display industry lately is LG Display's earnings turnaround. After four consecutive years of losses, the company has returned to annual profitability and posted three straight quarters in the black. The first quarter is traditionally a slow season for components including displays, which makes the improvement all the more striking — and worth examining for what it signals about the company's trajectory and the broader industry.
Two keywords capture LG Display's transformation: OLED and AX, or AI transformation. The company moved away from the LCD market — a crowded, low-margin space — and doubled down on OLED, where it holds a commanding technology lead over latecomers. As a result, OLED's share of total sales nearly doubled, rising from 32 percent five years ago to 61 percent last year.
The AI transformation push is equally noteworthy. In manufacturing, AX improves quality and production yields while optimizing delivery schedules, inventory management and equipment operations. According to the company, LG Display has embedded AX into its OLED production processes to analyze and predict defect causes before they occur, and has since expanded its reach into office administration and safety management across the entire organization.
LG Display has, in effect, demonstrated that the path to stronger corporate value and higher valuations runs through technology and AI transformation. Its experience also offers a clear signal for how Korean companies should position themselves against competition from China and other latecomers.
The results LG Display has delivered show that internal AX innovation can serve as the starting point for competitiveness. In capital-intensive industries like displays — where large upfront investment and long payback periods are the norm — sustaining that innovation requires what might be called "policy-level AX."
The government's National Growth Fund, currently in development, is designed as long-term growth capital that would channel more than 150 trillion won (about $98.8 billion) into advanced strategic industries — including AI, semiconductors and displays — over the next five years. The fund is intended to share investment risk with the private sector and strengthen the execution capacity of high-stakes innovation projects.
If internal AX generates speed and efficiency, policy finance vehicles like the National Growth Fund provide scale and staying power, reinforcing the value chain across entire industries. Combining that long-term investment infrastructure with corporate-level technology and AX innovation is what it will take to turn companies that are already running into ones that can fly. Only then will Korea's display industry hold its lead in the next round of global competition.
gil@heraldcorp.com
