500 employees affected by ams Osram restructuring
Earlier this year, ams OSRAM announced that a lead-customer had stopped the cornerstone microLED development project. The development forced the company to initiate a restructuring of its microLED-related activities in both Malaysia and Germany.
ams Osram says that its microLED related development activities in both Malaysia and Germany will remain a minimum core development for mainly proprietary use in future automotive products, such as advanced, high-pixelated forward lighting solutions.
However, these measures will affect more than 500 employees at the respective sites combined. Some freed-up resources are reallocated to strengthen the company’s market position in the automotive LED market, which is poised to soon become the single largest segment in the LED market according to the 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, the company states in a press release.
However, should a new lead customer commit – in a timely manner – to fund dedicated developments for specific applications, the company could continue a more substantial microLED development.
Stopping this cornerstone project will incur a one-time cost of around EUR 700 million, at the lower end of what ams Osram previously thought it would cost.
Connected to all of this, ams Osram is also pursuing to exit the Sale-and-Lease-Back (SLB) contract for its Kulim 8-inch-wafer factory. With this step, the company intends to reduce its long-term debt by around EUR 400 million.
