With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

<p>Every tech revolution seems to give this 175-year-old manufacturer another boost. Corning made the glass for Thomas Edison's light bulbs and created crack-resistant Gorilla Glass screens for smartphones. Today demand from AI data centers is fueling its fiber-optic cable business: Corning's revenue jumped 19% last year, to $15.6 billion.
</p>

Fortune 500

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

The 300 companies on this year’s list brought in over $12.6 trillion in revenue for the latest 12 months, with the median revenue figure at $22 billion.

America's Most Innovative Companies

Industries included in the sector are electrical equipment and industrial machinery.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Industrials

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The 200 companies on this list are transforming industries from the inside out.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-277-Corning

Perhaps now best known as a principal supplier of glass for Apple products, Corning employs more than 50,000 employees internationally with its world headquarters based in Corning, N.Y.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-277-Corning

The materials technology company produces specialty glass and ceramics for products like laptops, smartphones, and laboratory products.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2017 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

World's Most Admired Companies

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2016 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

Business insiders have spoken: Asked which companies they most admire, more than 4,100 executives, directors, and analysts chose these top 50 All-Stars.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Company Info

Industry

Location

Industry Rank

Previous Industry Rank

Website

Overall Score

Key Attributes Of Reputation

Innovation

People Management

Use of Corporate Assets

Social Responsibility

Quality of Management

Financial Soundness

Long-Term Investment Value

Quality of Products/Services

Global Competitiveness

Sector

Culture rank

Process rank

Product rank

Years on list

Previous rank

Key Financials (last Fiscal Year)

Revenues ($M)

Profits ($M)

Assets ($M)

Total Stockholder Equity ($M)

Profit Ratios

Profit as % of Revenues

Profits as % of Assets

Profits as % of Stockholder Equity

Earnings Per Share (last Fiscal Year)

Earnings Per Share ($)

EPS % Change (from prior fiscal year)

EPS % Change (5 year annual rate)

EPS % Change (10 year annual rate)

Total Return

Total Return to Investors (last year)

Total Return to Investors (5 year, annualized)

Total Return to Investors (10 year, annualized)

Founded in 1851 and formerly known as Corning Glass Works, Corning Incorporated is a producer of high-tech glass, ceramics, and other products. The company creates glass for everything from phones and sunglasses to TVs and defense equipment. Other products under Corning’s brands include fiber-optic hardware for telecommunications networks and internet usage. Corning also can be found in laboratories as its products are used in glassware and other products for scientific research.

Q3 2026

Q2 2026

Q1 2026

Q4 2025

Q3 2025

Q2 2025

Q1 2025

Q4 2024

Corning (GLW): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

legacy

Corning

corning

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you would need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would like now to turn the conference over to Chris Keenan, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Corning's third quarter 2026 earnings call. With me today are Wendell Weeks, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President, and Ed Schlesinger, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I would like to remind you that today's remarks contain forward-looking statements that fall within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. These factors are detailed in the company's financial reports. You should also note that we will be discussing our consolidated results using core performance measures, unless we specifically indicate our comments relate to GAAP data. Our core performance measures are non-GAAP measures used by management to analyze the business. For the third quarter, the difference between GAAP and core EPS principally reflects adjustments for hedged exposures, along with discrete tax items.

A reconciliation of core results to the comparable GAAP value can be found in the investor relations section of our website at corning.com. You may also access core results on our website with downloadable financials in the interactive analyst center. Supporting slides are being shown live on our webcast, and we encourage you to follow along. They are also available on our website for downloading. With that, I will turn the call over to Wendell.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Today, we announced outstanding third quarter results. Year-over-year, we grew sales 19% to $5.1 billion, and grew EPS significantly faster at 36% to $0.91, both exceeding guidance. We expanded gross margin 150 basis points to 40.5%. We increased operating margin 310 basis points to 22.7%, and we improved ROIC 330 basis points to 16.7%, all while delivering $661 million of free cash flow after investing over $500 million in capacity to support future growth. Overall, a great quarter. We expect our strong performance to continue. For the fourth quarter, we expect to grow sales about 19% year-over-year to a range of $5.2 billion-$5.3 billion, and to grow EPS by about 36% year-over-year to a range of $0.96 to $1.00.

Let's put our very strong results and outlook in the context of our Springboard journey. In May of this year, we upgraded and extended our Springboard plan to grow our annualized sales run rate to $20 billion by the end of 2026, $30 billion by the end of 2028, and $40 billion by the end of 2030. We shared that we were entering a new phase of accelerating growth. We planned for our compound annual growth rate to increase to 19% beginning in 2027 through 2030, after already growing at a robust 15% CAGR for the first three years of Springboard. That is a 400 basis point acceleration. In the third quarter, we already began to grow 19% year over year to $5.1 billion. That is an annualized run rate of $20.3 billion.

Looking ahead to quarter four, if you take the midpoint of our guidance, we'll grow 19% again to $5.25 billion. That is an annualized run rate of $21 billion. Just one quarter after upgrading our plan, we are exceeding our Springboard target of a $20 billion run rate by the end of 2026. We are already demonstrating the accelerated growth rate anticipated for the next phase of our plan. Interestingly, today's earnings call actually marks the three-year anniversary of when we introduced Springboard to all of you. Let's briefly look back on our journey and review what we've accomplished together. In the first three years of Springboard, from our starting point through quarter four 2026, we will grow sales 60% and grow EPS much faster at over 150%.

Along the way, we are significantly enhancing our financial profile, nearly doubling ROIC, and more than tripling full year free cash flow. Altogether, we've established a strong launch point for the next phase of Springboard. Looking ahead, we plan to double sales from $20 billion to $40 billion, grow EPS significantly faster than sales, expand ROIC, all while delivering robust free cash flow even as we continue to invest to capture growth. If you liked the first phase of Springboard, you're going to love the next one. Importantly, we already have many of the critical customer relationships and long-term agreements in place that underpin our growth outlook. Each relationship is unique, but they do have two common characteristics. The first is a focus on technology and co-innovation. We share our technology and development plans with each other.

This allows us to help our customers achieve their vision. Secondly, we seek to appropriately share risks and rewards as we deliver that vision. Our customers are counting on us to provide the right products at the right time. We take on the non-trivial responsibility of meeting challenging performance standards and production ramps. They take on the responsibility for how much of our products that they need, because, of course, they are best positioned to make that determination. We use multiple mechanisms to achieve the appropriate balance of mutual obligations, depending on the unique circumstances of our customers and their requirements of us. One example of a tool that we have used successfully in our glass and Solar businesses, and have now applied in Optical Communications, is to have our customers provide upfront cash to fund our capacity.

We then simply return the cash to our customers as they purchase the committed volume. This helps to both de-risk our capacity investments and give our customers supply chain assurance. You can see this dynamic already at work in our financials. In the first phase of Springboard, we more than tripled our full year free cash flow while investing strongly in new capacity. Looking ahead to the new Springboard phase of accelerating growth, we are seeking to continue to increase free cash flow and improve our financial profile, even as we invest to double the size of the company. Ed will share more color on this in a few minutes. We feel blessed to have these types of foundational relationships with our customers. They extend from our long-standing model of invent, make, and serve.

This fundamental approach has governed us for 175 years and will continue to guide us well into the future. We invest in innovation to invent products that enable transformative technologies. We create and build manufacturing platforms to deliver higher quality and lower cost than anyone else in the world, all to serve our customers over decades-long relationships. When we get this right, our customers become enduring partners, giving us the opportunity to solve their challenges and help create their own extraordinary products that delight their customers in turn. After 175 years, we are once again in a moment where we have the opportunity to apply our long-standing principled approach to value creation for our customers, for our people, for our communities, and importantly, for our shareholders. We are delighted to have you with us on that journey. Ed?

Thank you, Wendell. Good morning, everyone. We delivered an outstanding third quarter, and our results demonstrate the acceleration of growth outlined in our 20-30-40 Springboard Plan. Year-over-year in Q3, sales grew 19% to $5.1 billion, and EPS increased 36% to $0.91, both above our guided ranges. We expanded gross margin 150 basis points to 40.5%. Operating margin grew 310 basis points to 22.7%. ROIC grew 330 basis points to 16.7%, and we delivered strong free cash flow of $661 million, even as we continued to invest to capture robust demand. Moving to our segments. Our results were led by Optical Communications. Sales were $2.4 billion, up 44% year-over-year. Net income was $532 million, up 80% year-over-year, with the segment again delivering record profitability.

Enterprise grew sales 84% year-over-year, with Gen AI product sales growing more than 100% year-over-year, significantly outpacing GPU unit growth. This was driven by the rapid and broader adoption of our innovations and enabled by our steady capacity additions. At the launch of Springboard, our Enterprise sales run rate was $1.4 billion. Since that time, we've quadrupled Enterprise sales to a $6 billion run rate. Keep in mind, our growth is driven by scale-out. As optical penetrates the scale-up portion of the network, our revenue opportunity will increase dramatically. In Carrier, sales grew 4% year-over-year, driven by growth in data center interconnect. During the quarter, we announced long-term customer agreements with Zayo, Verizon, and AT&T to deliver fiber and connectivity solutions in support of their network expansions across broadband and data center interconnect.

Collectively, these agreements serve as an excellent proof point for our long-term opportunity in Carrier and give us confidence that our opportunity in DCI is bigger than the $1 billion target we've previously communicated. Moving to Glass Innovations, the successful execution of our More Corning strategy helped us outperform our end markets, which were significantly impacted by memory prices. Looking at the market, in the third quarter, TV units were down 4%, while notebooks and handhelds were down about 20%. Our third quarter sales were $1.5 billion, down $54 million or 3% year-over-year. Net income was $328 million, down 10% year-over-year. Looking ahead, we expect to continue executing our More Corning strategy. For example, we continue advancing our nearly 20-year partnership with Apple.

By the end of 2026, all the cover glass for iPhone, including iPhone Duo and Apple Watch, sold worldwide will be produced at our Harrodsburg, Kentucky facility. Additionally, we recently announced a price adjustment for our display glass substrates that will begin to take effect in the fourth quarter to address a weaker yen environment and rising costs such as critical materials and energy. In Automotive, our sales were up 4% year-over-year. Recovery in North American Class 8 truck market more than offset the impact from the light-duty vehicle market, which was down 3%. Net income of $67 million was down 1% year-over-year. Looking ahead, we remain focused on our More Corning Content strategy. In Solar, Q3 sales were $436 million, up $117 million or 37% year-over-year. The segment reported a net loss of $7 million.

We continue to ramp production at our wafer and module facilities, albeit at a slower pace than anticipated. As our productivity improves, so will our output and profitability. Demand remains strong and the market preference for U.S.-made solar products continues to strengthen. Recent U.S. trade action under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 improves the overall pricing environment and demand for Corning's solar products. Overall, we are making solid progress building a more than $3 billion revenue stream in Solar with profitability above the corporate average. Sales in Life Sciences and Emerging Growth businesses were up 1% year-over-year as our Life Sciences business outperformed the end market. Net income was down $13 million year-over-year due to investments in Emerging Growth programs. Shifting to our outlook.

In the fourth quarter, we expect sales to grow approximately 19% year-over-year to a range of $5.2 billion-$5.3 billion, and EPS to grow approximately 36% year-over-year to a range of $0.96-$1.00. As we move to our next phase of Springboard, we have a really compelling opportunity in front of us. We plan to double the size of the company from $20 billion to $40 billion by the end of 2030. We grow organically by inventing products that enable transformative technologies, and we create and build manufacturing platforms to deliver higher quality and lower costs than anyone else in the world. Historically, this meant we invest capital upfront before the revenue and free cash flow shows up, and then we have high returns and generate strong free cash flow down the road.

We have been steadily improving that model by appropriately sharing the risk and responsibility of investments with our customers. Many such long-term customer agreements underpin our growth. We use multiple mechanisms in our agreements to achieve the appropriate balance of mutual obligations, depending upon the unique circumstances of our customers and their requirements of us. One tool we use is for our customers to provide the cash upfront, and then we return that cash as they purchase the committed volume. We have successfully used this tool in our glass and Solar businesses and are now applying it in Optical Communications. This both provides our customers with supply chain certainty while securing our revenue, returns, and free cash flow. You can see this dynamic already at work in our financials. There is a line in our operating cash flow labeled customer deposits.

For the first nine months of the year, that amount was $639 million. This line includes upfront cash we receive from our customers during the period, net of the cash returned to customers from previous deposits as they purchase their committed volumes. At a macro level, this mechanism smooths the cash impact of our capacity additions, helping fund the upfront investment, and then returning customer deposits from the operating cash flow generated by our profitable delivery of the committed volume. You can already see this in effect in our cash flows. We generated $2.3 billion of free cash flow over the first nine months of this year, while we steadily invested $1.3 billion in CapEx to add capacity, supporting the growth outlined in Springboard. As we've previously shared, in 2026, we're planning to invest approximately $2 billion in CapEx, primarily to support the growth in Optical Communications.

We plan to keep this flywheel going as we enter our new accelerating growth phase of Springboard. We seek to continue to increase free cash flow and further improve our financial profile, even as we invest to double the size of the company. Given our increasing free cash flow, this takes us to capital allocation. Our philosophy is to prioritize investing in organic growth opportunities that drive significant returns. Our shareholders have validated that this creates the most value for them, and this remains a priority. We will continue to maintain a strong and efficient balance sheet, and we're in great shape. We have one of the longest debt tenors in the S&P 500. Our current average debt maturity is more than 20 years, and we have no significant debt maturity coming due in any given year.

We also expect to continue our strong track record of returning excess cash to shareholders. We already have a strong dividend, and therefore, as we go forward, our primary vehicle for returning cash to shareholders will be share buybacks. Now, before we move to Q&A, let me reiterate my key takeaways. We've had great success to date with Springboard. We delivered significant growth and dramatically enhanced our financial profile. We also built a strong foundation with our capabilities, manufacturing platforms, and our deep customer relationships. From this foundation, our growth will accelerate. Our third quarter results and fourth quarter outlook already demonstrate the momentum we expect in the next phase of Springboard. We expect to double our sales from $20 billion to $40 billion by the end of 2030, to grow EPS much faster than sales, and to improve our financial profile even further.

We expect our free cash flow to grow through the planning cycle, even as we invest. In total, we are focused on creating significant value for our shareholders, and we look forward to updating you on our journey. With that, I will turn things back over to Chris for Q&A.

Thank you, Ed. Operator, we are ready for the first question.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. The first question comes from Josh Spector with UBS. Your line is open.

Yeah. Hi, good morning. I wanted to ask on just the optical margin cadence. I do not know, Ed or Wendell, when you guys feel comfortable to talk about margins on a forward view at all. Clearly, your investments are picking up. Your incremental pre-tax margins are still in the 40% or higher range. Is this something you have confidence yet to be able to talk about and give a target at some point in the near future?

Thanks for the question, Josh. I would agree. I think we have done a really nice job as we have been growing Optical to improve our net income margin. I will use that as sort of the vector to think about. We were in the mid-teens, we are now in the low 20s. I certainly think there is an opportunity for us to continue to improve from there, and obviously that has driven the company's operating margin significantly. We have grown that into the low 20s as well. Again, I think we feel good about our environment. The thing I would say is we are going to be adding capacity in Optical to grow. As we have shared, we are also still building a Solar business, and that is actually still negatively impacting or dragging our margins a little bit.

I do not know that we are quite yet ready to put out a new target, but I think you should think of us as continuing to be where we are at and making progress from there as we grow.

Thanks. That is helpful. If I could just follow up, just in terms of corporate costs, that seems to be a thing people are nitpicking on this morning a bit. You are about $50 million-ish lower year-on-year. That was a big part of why Q3 was in line. Is there something going on there between the allocations between corporate and the segments, and what is the assumption in the fourth quarter, please?

Yeah, there is nothing going on. We mentioned on our second quarter call, and it continues here in our third quarter, that our variable compensation expense. So we pay for performance, and we have a number of tools that we use to do that, and the compensation expense is a little above what I would consider to be normalized levels. We saw that in the second quarter. We have seen that here in the third quarter. It probably levels off. I do not necessarily think it accelerates in the fourth quarter, and then it resets as we go into the subsequent year. So I view operating expenses, which in general is what sits in that corporate expenses bucket, as being a leverage point for us as we grow. I think we will continue to be able to leverage our operating expenses. They will grow slower than our sales.

Thank you. And our next question will come from Asiya Merchant with Citi. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you for taking my call. Just a couple quick questions here. Wendell, you talked about, at CNBC earlier this morning, about Gen AI related demand. There's just been a lot of concerns in the market about the durability of this demand, whether it's financing or any other kind of various constraints that are out there. Just you're standing firm with your Springboard. There was a large growth factor associated with Optical. Just if you can talk about how you're thinking about these various constraints and how you factor that into your Springboard.

Thanks for the question, Asiya. What she is referring to, for those of you who didn't have a chance to see CNBC this morning, is one of the things that I talk about is sort of an important document that filed in this last week, which is Anthropic's S-1. You see a number of interesting things in that. My three main takeaways are the tremendous growth is there. Second is the implied profitability of their inference tokens, which is that primary driver for what it is their customers use as inference, and that looks very profitable. Their comment that their number one constraint is now and will continue to be compute, and we provide the networking for that compute. What we see in our demand, Asiya, is a continued press from our customers to do more and more.

As a result, what you see us doing when we're doing these multi-year agreements is asking those customers. Our customers are primarily the major hyperscalers, given our longstanding relationships, help us fund and secure that capacity so that we can be assured of that demand, and we reduce any amount of risk to our shareholders. I don't think I have gotten one call yet that has been for anything else other than more of our new products, faster and broader. Does that answer your question, or did you have something deeper behind that, Asiya?

No, that's great. Just on the scale-up, Ed, I know you talked about the scale-up opportunity being significantly greater. You guys talked about it at your investor day as well. Just any updates. There's been just a lot of chatter around all the various events that have happened around optical and scale up. Just any more color on how you're thinking about photonics as a map through 2030 and any other color for next year as well on the photonics map. Thank you.

That's a great question, Asiya. So for those of you who don't follow this closely, why she is asking about scale up is a, Ed, our demand is primarily driven by what's called scale out, connecting those GPUs out down the rows to every other GPU that sits in the cluster. That's about 16 fibers per GPU in today's architectures. 100% of the current scale-up architectures are in copper. If that was 100% optical scale up, you increase to 160 fibers per GPU. So that's a tenfold increase. The question then becomes, how fast is that going to happen? What percent of the GPUs will be connected by optical scale up?

Given its strong leverage on our finances, because obviously a 10 times increase in demand per GPU would have a significant impact on our financials, given our position, this is what drives the quite appropriate fascination with timing. What we said in the May IR event was, we expected optical scale-up to begin to accelerate in 2028. We continue to believe that strongly. We are on the inside of that ecosystem. I know people hear different things about different particular components, and will this be delayed, and will that be delayed. This is just classic technology development. We continue to be quite convicted that this accelerates in 2028.

Yep. The next question comes from Meta Marshall with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks. Wendell, maybe expanding on that, if you could just speak to the battle that you guys are having in terms of being able to fulfill Carrier versus Enterprise, and maybe just how, if there is a battle there, to figure out how to make those allocations. Then maybe second for Ed, just I believe in previous quarters, you would contextualize what the Solar overhang was, just if you were willing to lay that out. Thanks.

We started so early that it's why you've been able to see our revenues be seeming to increase so smoothly because we started on the capacity early. You are correct that especially our newest high-density products are surprising us with the speed and breadth of their adoption, and that our traditional Carrier customers now really want this product in their DCI architectures because they can fit 2 to 4 more times fiber in the same conduit. At the same time, Gen AI is why we developed the dense products as we try to increase the amount of fibers per GPU. That also has a strong demand for those products. What's really causing the tension is people want that newest product, and we're still ramping that up to be the product across all of our platforms.

The way we sort of sort that out is centered around the longstanding nature of the relationships, those ones that are going on for decades. We tend to prioritize those customers. As well, when we have to add capacity, we have a natural sort towards quality because we ask them to contribute to those capacity adds. This will tend to shift our allocations, shift the percent of our revenue that goes to those folks who have the resources to help us fund that capacity. Does that make sense to you, Meta?

I will take the second question, Meta. The first thing I want to point out is, I think the most important thing on Solar, the most important takeaway I think for folks is the Section 232 ruling, which took place in the third quarter. That actually has a very nice impact on the pricing environment and also indexes to demand for U.S.-made Solar products. That is us. I think that is a really important thing. It actually continues to strengthen our view in the ability to build a more than $3 billion business with nice profitability. I think that is important. As we said on the call, we continue to make slow, steady progress on our ability to make and sell the products that we make. We make polysilicon, wafers, and modules in the U.S.

We had sort of, I will call it bottomed out in the second quarter, and we are around the same level here in the third quarter. The drag, if you will, or the EPS or margin impact in the third quarter is similar to what we saw in the second quarter, and we would expect it to slowly improve from this level as we go through 2027. Then, depending on our ability to inflect up on our productivity, that will really drive the profitability aspect of the business.

Thank you. The next question is going to come from Joseph Cardoso with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Hello, good morning. This is Marc Vitenzon on for Joseph Cardoso. Thanks for taking my question. I guess the first question kind of piggybacks on the supply question with regards to accelerating top-line growth from 17% in 2Q to 19% in 3Q and then high teens exiting the year and going into next year. How much of that is driven by demand versus new capacity coming online? How should we just think about the broader demand supply dynamics there? I have a follow-up. Thank you.

Things are tight, and so as you see our revenue increasing, certainly us bringing on our new capacity is part and parcel of that. We have the capacity plans in place that are already well underway to support that accelerating growth that you see in the next phase of Springboard as we move from the sort of 15% CAGR during the first three years to 19% through 2027, achieved throughout the end of our Springboard planning period. So it will be both. The other thing that also helps us on the revenue is basically realized price. Our overall price is going up, but more importantly, as we develop these new products and they create a lot of value for our customers, and we tend to split that value creation with our customers, that allows us to get more revenue per element of capacity. Did that answer your question, Marc?

Yeah, that is super helpful. The follow-up would be on Carrier, where historically you framed growth around mid-single digits. This quarter, you signed Verizon and AT&T on top of Lumen and Zayo. How are you thinking about Carrier growth into 2027? Would the acceleration primarily be driven by DCI and long haul, or is fiber-to-the-home also a substantial contributor? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Marc. For sure, data center interconnect is the bigger opportunity in the Carrier space. I would expect that to drive nice growth as we go into next year, and then beyond that. As we shared, we had originally said we thought that DCI could be a billion-dollar business by the end of the decade. We will clearly exceed both the timing and the magnitude of that target. We have not yet set a new target because I think there is a lot of activity in that space, so we will take some time and sort of lay that out and come back and talk about it later. I would also say that fiber-to-the-home will continue to be a growth driver. I think you will see deployments certainly by the large carriers in that space. We are very well-positioned for that as well.

Thank you. The next question will come from Wamsi Mohan with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Yes, thank you so much. I had two as well. Maybe first on the customer deposits. Can you help us think through how much of the $2 billion of 2026 CapEx was funded by customers, and how does that share change into 2027 and beyond? If you sort of look at the free cash flow dynamic, if I understand it right, you are going to repay deposits as customers take volume. How much does it sort of create a headwind for free cash flows as you look into 2027 and 2028? I will follow up. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Wamsi. Also congrats on the marathon. I saw some photos of you at the Wineglass Marathon. On the customer funding, what I would say is, not all of our capital is for Optical or towards our growth. Some of it is maintenance of business. If I sort of exclude that part, the maintenance of business part, the majority of our capital is funded by the long-term agreements that we have signed. Over the long term, that will kind of even out. It may not match exactly in any given quarter. We generally would get cash before we are spending the capital. The cash flow question, which I tried to explain today a little bit, but maybe I will elaborate a little bit more, I think is really the important one.

For us, what we are seeking to do is as we grow and invest, to continue to increase our free cash flow through the planning cycle. You saw that or you've been seeing that in 2026. Clearly, year to date, we're in a great position. Even as we return that cash, we expect to be able to continue to grow our free cash flow nicely because we will be generating a nice return, a nice level of profit and cash on the volume we're selling. Then therefore, we're returning a portion of that via that incremental operating cash flow. It sort of smooths out our cash flow, reduces the volatility over time, and allows us to grow free cash flow as we continue to grow sales. That's how you should think about it.

Okay. Thanks, Ed, so much, and thanks, I appreciate the comment. On the display price increases, how large is the increase and how much shows up in Q4? Does it fully offset sort of the weaker yen? Because you did have a little step down in display profitability in the quarter. Are we back to normal by Q4, or does it take a little longer for it to flow through?

Yes. First of all, on the timing, we're implementing those increases now. They should begin to take place in the fourth quarter, but I don't think you should expect that to be a significant impact in the quarter. They're really geared around 2027 and beyond. As you know, the yen has been weak, and there are other input costs where we're seeing some level of inflation. We shared back in May that we had sort of de-risked our long-term plan and taken the yen to JPY 150. We continue to hedge, and we hope to do better than that in our hedging, but that's sort of why we're making these price increases. We're not disclosing the specific amount of the increase, but you can think of it as similar to what we've done the last few times we've done it.

Thank you. Our next question comes from George Notter with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Hi, guys. Thanks a lot. Wendell, I wanted to ask about your perspective on the Chinese fiber in your business. I assume you're going to talk to tariffs and shipping costs, keeping Chinese fiber out of the markets that you play in. Certainly, there's geopolitical concerns. Certainly, there's your LTAs and co-innovation with customers. At the same time, I mean, the market is just so asymmetric in terms of supply and demand. I guess what I'm asking is, are you seeing fiber from China and what's your perspective on that potential impact in your business? Thanks a lot.

I think that's actually a great question, George. In terms of the percent of the market that we see exposure to Chinese fiber, that has been dropping actually. Now, as to a lot of different things, not the least of which is more and more of the fiber is being consumed in pretty complicated connectivity of product sets, where the degree of integration is high. Once it becomes integrated, its shipping costs become a lot higher, right? The tariff costs become a lot higher. So it's not quite as easy as shipping reels of fiber around, because you have so much of the value sitting in connectivity. That being said, we compete in China against the Chinese players, and what we always count on for the long term is we're the highest quality, lowest cost, biggest producer in the world, and we continue to expand those advantages.

For now, we're not seeing it as a significant competitive pressure, but we're always preparing for the moment when that could happen.

Thank you. Our next question is going to come from Matt Niknam with Truist. Your line is open.

Hey, congrats on the quarter. Thanks so much for taking the questions. I will continue the theme and just ask two quick ones if I could. First, on the fourth quarter outlook, maybe, Ed, if you can help us unpack the outlook for the $5.2 billion-$5.3 billion for sales just across the different segments. Then maybe a follow-on for Ed as well. You filed for a $2 billion ATM equity program a few months ago. You have $2.5 billion in cash on the balance sheet. The business is obviously generating additional incremental cash flow. So if you can speak to the rationale for setting up the ATM and what would make you effectively use it relative to debt or other sort of customer prepayments. Thank you.

Yeah. Matt, just want to make sure I caught your first question. Specifically, are you asking about the content of the sales growth, like where it is coming from in the fourth quarter?

That's right, across the different segments. Any relative changes relative to 3Q?

Got you. Yeah, I think for sure, we expect to have a really robust quarter in Optical Communications. That'll drive the lion's share of our growth year-over-year. As we shared, the AI data center component of our Enterprise business grew 100%. I think we really are seeing very strong demand, and that's going to drive a lot of the growth. I think Solar will continue to also drive growth as we bring capacity on, and then that should start to impact our earnings as we improve our productivity. Again, I think of that as slow and steady, but it'll certainly be a growth driver. So probably pretty similar dynamics to what you saw in the third quarter. On the ATM, I think of it as housekeeping for us. We have a shelf registration for debt. This is very much like a shelf registration for equity.

We have no intention of doing anything at this time. But it allows us to use this as a tool if we ever need to do that in the future. As you know, what's important to us is having a very strong balance sheet. We invest over long cycles in innovation, and we are growing a lot now, and obviously, we're adding capacity, but there are a lot of technology opportunities for us, and we want to make sure that no matter what happens in the external environment, we can continue to invest through any kind of cycle. So we always do things that help improve our balance sheet, and this is just a housekeeping thing for us to have on the shelf.

Thank you. The next question is going to come from Martin Yang with Oppenheimer. Your line's open.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. A question on Solar's profitability in the medium term, perhaps. Your corporate operating margin keeps improving, and you have the goal of Solar getting to corporate average towards the end of 2027. Just want to make sure that goal is still intact and that you're referring to this continuous improving trajectory of a corporate average. So Solar is meeting that moving target or is it Solar's margin profile getting to the previous corporate average comparing to the most recent one?

Yeah, I think in general, currently Solar is below our corporate operating margin, so it's creating a drag. As we improve productivity, that profitability will improve, and I think it'll be slow and steady and we feel great about the business overall. The Section 232 ruling is also very favorable to the pricing environment, which is a nice impact in general to margins. I don't know. I think you should just think about it as continuing to help our overall corporate average as it improves. If we continue to move that number up, it's certainly possible that Solar gets there, but I think if we get above 20% in Solar, it will significantly improve our overall corporate average.

It's a positive sort of question in that will our corporate average improve faster than we can the ultimate level of profitability we can deliver in Solar. That would be a really good problem to have, both of them racing for increased profitability.

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Our next question will come from John Roberts with Mizuho. Your line is open.

Thank you. We usually think of Starlink as a competitive threat, but with their new move towards terrestrial, do they become a frenemy? And maybe with their data centers, they become more than a frenemy. Could you maybe give us some thoughts on that?

Well, I'm done chuckling. So we're fans of LEO, of low Earth orbit. A, because we have some content on those. But B, you are right on the right area, which is now we'll be able to connect people, especially in more sparsely created areas or sparsely populated areas, as well as any sort of spots in the network that you could easily reach with a shared architecture. That's going to increase the bandwidth as they go more and more into data centers. That becomes a big driver for our product as well. As you quite rightly point out, the data has to land in a network and that data as it lands is certainly fiber optics. So in general, we are very positive on LEO, and we think you're looking at it right.

About the frenemy part, I think they are an important part of the mosaic, and we like customers.

Ed, the yen hedge went from 98% down to 94%. Is there a plan to lower that over time by about 4% per quarter?

No. No plans, John. We do our best to hedge the majority of our exposure in any given quarter. That moves around a little bit depending on what happens in the quarter. But the goal is to be as hedged up, if you will, as we can be practically.

Thank you. I am showing no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Chris for closing remarks.

Thank you for joining us. Before we close, I want to let everyone know that we will be attending the UBS Global Technology and AI Conference on December 1. Additionally, we will be scheduling management visits to investor offices in select cities. Finally, a web replay of today's call will be available on our site starting later this morning. Once again, thank you all for joining us. Operator, that concludes our call. Please disconnect all lines.

Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.

Corning (GLW) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Company Participants