Specialty DisplaysTOVIS took its phone-module lines into the car.
Specialty Displays
TOVIS took its phone-module lines into the car.
In 2020 TOVIS, a Korean casino-display maker whose larger business made phone modules, mainly for LG Electronics, committed ₩34.0bn to a dedicated automotive display line in Dalian, China. By FY2025 automotive displays brought in ₩350.7bn, 54.7% of revenue as reported. On 1 July 2026 that business became a separate company, Neovue, and TOVIS went back to being a casino-display maker. No valuation and no price target.
An instrument cluster in a car cockpit. Module makers assemble cockpit displays for Tier-1 suppliers and panel makers, which build for carmakers, and entry to that supply chain rests on track record and trust.
TOVIS is best known for the displays on casino slot machines. By FY2018, though, its larger business was phone modules, mainly for LG Electronics handsets. In 2020 the company committed to a dedicated automotive display line. By FY2024 automotive revenue was larger than the casino-led monitor line, and on 1 July 2026 the automotive business became a separate company, Neovue.
Automotive displays, FY2025
₩350.7bn
54.7% of TOVIS revenue as reported, against 0.2% in FY2018. The business was split off as Neovue on 1 July 2026.
A module maker with a shrinking customer
TOVIS was founded in 1998 and registered as a supplier to IGT, the slot-machine maker, in 1999. It added TFT-LCD modules in 2003, had registered as an LG Electronics supplier by 2005 and absorbed Neodis, another module maker, in 2007. By FY2018 the module side was the larger business, and it was shrinking. Phone modules and other lines fell from ₩382.8bn in FY2017 to ₩290.2bn in FY2018, and group revenue fell 31% from FY2014 to FY2019.
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Phone modules and other
₩290.2bn
67.5%
Industrial monitors (mainly casino)
₩139.3bn
32.4%
Automotive displays
₩0.7bn
0.2%
TOVIS revenue by business in FY2018, ₩430.2bn in total. Phones made up 99.7% of module revenue. Automotive is ₩0.7bn on the company's end-use split; a 2019 broker counted ₩15.0bn on a wider definition. Source: KIRS Corporate Research Center (2025-12), company data; eBest Investment & Securities (2019-11) for the ₩15.0bn wider-definition figure.
The casino business looked like the profit engine. Industrial-monitor revenue grew 23% a year from 2013 to 2017, and a broker put casino unit margins at 15–20%. About 99% of casino sales were exported, around 80% of them to North America. The company's 2018 plan led with being “global No. 1” in industrial monitors, and automotive was not yet a pillar. Its first automotive work that year was glass bonding for LG Display.
Slot-machine reels. Research puts display replacement at about every three years and cabinet replacement at every seven to ten, and about 80% of TOVIS casino sales were replacements at existing customers.
In NRG's reading, the pressure on TOVIS came from its customer base. The module lines depended on handsets, mostly LG Electronics phones, and phone-module revenue was already falling well before LG announced its exit. By 2019 TOVIS had lines and skills whose main customer was buying less, and it had to decide what to do with them.
The 2020 commitment
In 2020 TOVIS committed ₩34.0bn to a dedicated automotive display line in Dalian, China. The same year it formed an alliance with LG Display and won Hyundai Mobis, its first Tier-1 customer. It made the commitment in a year when its monitor business halved. Industrial-monitor revenue fell from ₩162.7bn in FY2019 to ₩86.3bn in FY2020 as US commercial gaming revenue fell by more than 31%, and the group posted an operating loss of ₩5.6bn on revenue of ₩272.8bn.
Dedicated automotive line, 2020
₩34.0bn
A line in Dalian, China, sized for about ₩200bn of revenue a year. TOVIS committed it before LG Electronics announced its exit from phones in April 2021.
LG Electronics announced on 5 April 2021 that it would close its phone business by 31 July. By September 2021 a broker reported that the TOVIS phone assembly lines were being converted to automotive, and that the company had disclosed compensation talks with LG in its half-year report. The amount has not been published.
In NRG's framing, three paths were open. Staying in phone modules meant one dominant customer, with phones still 91.3% of module revenue in 2020. Concentrating on monitors was the second, but ₩139.3bn of monitor revenue in FY2018 could not fill the module lines. TOVIS chose automotive modules through a panel maker and Tier-1s, in a market the company calls “closed”. That path used the bonding, touch and strength-design know-how built for phones, and it swapped product lives of under a year for programs of three to five years or more.
Lines, plants and customers
Mass production began on the Dalian line in 2021. The phone business ran off fastest in 2022, the year after LG left handsets. Phones went from 99.7% of module revenue in 2018 to 27.4% in 2022 and none in 2024. The monitor business recovered from its pandemic trough, and automotive grew from ₩18.0bn in FY2021 to ₩322.6bn in FY2024, when it passed the monitor line.
Fiscal year
Monitors
Automotive
Group
FY2021
141.4
18.0
263.4
FY2022
188.1
88.4
328.2
FY2023
249.7
175.3
447.4
FY2024
269.8
322.6
623.8
FY2025
257.5
350.7
640.3
TOVIS revenue by business, FY2021–FY2025, ₩bn. “Monitors” is industrial monitors, mainly casino. “Group” is consolidated revenue; the gap is other lines (phones to FY2022, then subsidiaries). Source: TOVIS IR (2023-05, 2024-06) for FY2021–FY2022 monitors and automotive; group totals and FY2023–FY2025 from TOVIS Annual Reports FY2021, FY2023 and FY2025 (DART), where the automotive line includes a small phone-module residue in FY2023.
Then TOVIS built in Korea. The Seocheon plant in South Chungcheong cost ₩34.8bn and was completed in June 2023, and a second phase ran from January 2024. The company tied the site to customers whose “preparation against China risk is complete”. Automotive sales booked in Korea rose from ₩72.3bn in FY2023 to ₩239.2bn in FY2024, lifting the domestic share from 41% to 74%. That fits the Seocheon ramp, though the filings do not give a cause.
An automated electronics assembly line. Analysts later pointed to the bonding, touch and automation work built for phones as the capability TOVIS carried into automotive modules.
The lean years lasted into 2023. In October 2022 a broker judged that automotive sales still fell short of fixed costs. The Dalian plant went from a ₩4.0bn loss in Q1 2023 to a ₩1.5bn profit in Q1 2024, and a broker reported Seocheon profitable from Q2 2024. Plant utilization on KIRS's measure rose from 34% in FY2022 to 68% in FY2024.
Automotive utilization, H1 2026
81%
On the filings' operating-hours basis, up from 73% in FY2025. Daily capacity reached 13,000 automotive units in H1 2026, from 7,500 in FY2025.
The customer list moved from a panel maker's subcontract toward Tier-1 awards: LG Display from 2018, Hyundai Mobis in 2020, Denso Korea in 2021 and Continental, now Aumovio, in 2024. The largest customer, not named in the filings, went from 25.1% of revenue in FY2024 to 34.1% in FY2025. By the FY2025 report TOVIS was also developing OLED displays as panel technology shifted.
One company becomes two
Against FY2019, group revenue rose ₩221.4bn to ₩640.3bn in FY2025. Industrial monitors supplied ₩94.8bn of that rise, and the module side, by then automotive plus subsidiaries, supplied ₩126.6bn. In FY2025 revenue grew 2.7% and operating profit fell 2.0%. Monitor sales slipped, which management put down to tariffs, while automotive grew 8.7%. In H1 2026, before the split, revenue was ₩357.8bn, up 11.8% on H1 2025, and automotive made up 57.7% of it.
Revenue fell 35% in FY2020, stayed low in FY2021 and passed its FY2019 level in FY2023
On 5 November 2025 the board voted to spin the automotive business off into Neovue. The stated aims are expertise, faster decisions and separate accountability for each business. One independent research house reads the split as a capital question: automotive needs frequent investment, while the casino business is mature. Shareholders approved the plan on 2 June 2026, and the split took effect on 1 July.
At the split
TOVIS (continuing)
Neovue (new)
Business
Casino displays and other
Automotive displays
Revenue, FY2024
₩269.3bn
₩268.3bn
Assets, 30 June 2025
₩314.0bn
₩184.8bn
Equity, 30 June 2025
₩174.6bn
₩95.6bn
Split ratio (book value)
0.646
0.354
Main plants
Songdo (Korea); Dongguan (China)
Seocheon (Korea); Dalian not stated
TOVIS and Neovue at the split, effective 1 July 2026. Revenue is on a separate basis. The book-value ratio was restated in December 2025 for a planned treasury-share cancellation, and the filings reviewed do not say whether the Dalian subsidiary moved to Neovue. Source: TOVIS split decision and amendments (2025-11 to 2026-07); EGM notice (2026-05); Half-Year Report 2026 (DART).
TOVIS is a casino-display company again. Since FY2023 its industrial-monitor line has stayed between ₩249.7bn and ₩269.8bn a year. It shares the market mainly with Kortek, and one research house puts TOVIS's share near 40%. Its buyers are changing too. Apollo funds combined IGT's gaming business with Everi on 1 July 2025, and IGT had already moved from sole-sourcing Kortek to two vendors. No results for either company after the split are public yet.
What transfers
Five points carry over to operators whose main customer is shrinking. The first is to move the skills into longer product lives, as TOVIS did when it took bonding, touch and strength-design work from phones into car programs. The second is to enter through a partner that already holds the qualification. TOVIS bonded glass for LG Display from 2018 and won Tier-1 customers after that.
The third is to budget for the lean years: the line was committed in 2020, and the Dalian plant still lost money in Q1 2023. The fourth is to build near the customer when trade risk rises, as TOVIS did at Seocheon. The fifth is to separate the businesses once their capital needs diverge; the split followed a year after automotive passed half of revenue, at 51.7% in FY2024. The last three lean partly on broker and research-house readings and on NRG's own inference.
“TOVIS moved skills built for phones with lives of under a year into car programs that run three to five years or more, and it carried the lean years until the automotive business could stand as a company of its own.”
— Nathan Research Group, Korea Case Series N° 01
The filings leave open the questions that decide what comes next. They do not say how much automotive revenue runs through a panel maker's programs. Nor can they show whether an LCD module assembler keeps its content per vehicle as cockpits move to LTPS LCD and OLED, or how slot makers will allocate display orders after IGT's merger. The full 21-page case, with 14 exhibits and five questions public data cannot answer, is available to download with this article.
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The filings show what the 2020 decision produced: an automotive business at 54.7% of FY2025 revenue, two plants and a split into two companies. They do not show how panel makers divide module assembly between their own lines and outside assemblers, how long a Tier-1 takes to qualify a smaller supplier, whether an LCD module assembler keeps its content per vehicle as cockpits move to LTPS LCD and OLED, or how slot makers dual-source displays after a merger. That detail sits with people who have built, sourced and bought these displays, and reaching them compliantly is what we do.
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Slot-machine OEMs
Former product and program staff at global slot-machine makers, the buyers of casino displays, who can speak to how cabinet makers choose and dual-source display suppliers and what a new cabinet launch means for display orders.
TOVIS consolidated revenue (bars, ₩bn) and operating margin (line), FY2019–FY2025. Margins are group-level: the segment note labels its two units only “A” and “B”, so operating profit cannot be assigned to monitors or automotive. Source: TOVIS Annual Reports FY2021, FY2023 and FY2025 (DART), consolidated.
A handful of former sales managers from Korea's two casino-display makers, who can speak to how OEM qualification and design-in cycles work and to price and specification talks with slot makers.
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