PhilOptics

PhilOptics was founded in 2008 by Han Gi-Soo, in Gyeonggi-do, building laser-processing equipment for OLED display panels — the machines that cut ultra-thin glass and lift finished OLED layers off their carrier substrates without shattering them. It listed on KOSDAQ in 2017 and, in 2020, spun off its secondary-battery equipment unit into a separate company, PhilEnergy, which went public on its own in 2023.

That display-glass background turns out to be exactly the skill set the glass substrate industry needs. Drilling thousands of microscopic holes into a sheet of brittle glass without cracking it — the problem the whole substrate-fabrication stage is built around solving — is a close cousin of cutting and lifting ultra-thin OLED glass. PhilOptics started applying its laser optics know-how to semiconductor glass substrates back in 2019, years before the current wave of investor attention arrived.

PhilOptics now runs four business lines: OLED display equipment (its original core), secondary battery process equipment (via PhilEnergy), semiconductor equipment for glass substrates, and solar equipment (laser doping and scribing). The semiconductor line is where the glass substrate story lives, and it has grown into a five-piece equipment lineup: laser TGV (through-glass via) drilling, ABF drilling, DI (direct imaging) exposure systems, singulation (dicing) equipment, and — completed most recently, in 2025 — a TGV inspection system.

The headline claim, and the one PhilOptics repeats in every investor update, is that it's the only company in the world to have actually shipped TGV laser equipment into a customer's mass-production line, starting in the first half of 2024. Plenty of equipment makers can demonstrate a working tool in a lab. PhilOptics is one of a very small number that can point to a real production floor running its machine today.

At SEDEX 2025, the company showed off "Tronada," a TGV tool that drills holes matched to a customer's actual chip layout instead of a fixed grid pattern — useful because every customer's chip placement is different, and PhilOptics says the irregular-pattern approach processes faster than competitors' fixed-grid tools. Demand for that specific feature isn't proven yet, but it's a sign the company is trying to differentiate on more than just being first.

Revenue still comes mostly from the legacy OLED display business, but glass substrate equipment is the fastest-growing and most-watched piece of it. In the first quarter of 2025, PhilOptics reported standalone revenue of ₩31.9 billion — roughly 2.5 times the ₩13.1 billion from the same quarter a year earlier — with operating profit flipping from a loss to a ₩2 billion gain. The company credited glass substrate equipment shipments, on top of its core OLED business, as the driver.

The catch, and it's a real one: PhilOptics doesn't disclose exactly which customers bought the TGV, singulation, and inspection tools it has shipped so far — deals are covered by non-disclosure agreements, and the company only refers to "global customers" in plural. That's normal in this industry at this stage, but it also means the revenue growth is currently a headline number without a fully visible customer list behind it.

PhilOptics sits in stage 3, equipment & process technology — the stage this value chain is most crowded on the Korean side, alongside YC Chem and Chemtronics. Where those two work the chemistry and full wet-process side, PhilOptics is the laser-hardware specialist: it makes the machines that physically drill, expose, cut, and inspect the glass.

Equipment makers in a pre-volume industry live and die by reference wins — the first real production deployment that other prospective customers can point to as proof the tool actually works outside a lab. PhilOptics' claim to being first-to-mass-production with TGV equipment is exactly that kind of reference, and Yuanta Securities has named it its top pick in the glass substrate equipment theme specifically because of that reference base, calling it the equipment maker with the widest track record in the space.

The company's own logic mirrors what analysts have said publicly: in an industry that's still pre-volume, the laser-processing companies that touch glass first — before there's meaningful material or component revenue to speak of — are likely to see the earliest revenue, simply because someone has to buy the tools before anyone can buy the finished substrates.