Corning Earnings: Buy Into the Fundamentals, Sell the Market Pessimism

Key Morningstar Metrics for Corning

• Fair Value Estimate
  : $155.00
• Morningstar Rating
  : ★★★
• Morningstar Economic Moat Rating
  : Narrow
• Morningstar Uncertainty Rating
  : High

What We Thought of Corning’s Earnings

Corning’s GLW second-quarter results beat guidance, with non-GAAP sales rising 17% year over year to $4.7 billion and non-GAAP operating margin rising 190 basis points year over year to 20.9%. Shares sold off nearly 20% intraday July 28, as guidance appears to have disappointed the market.

Why it matters: The selloff looks overly punitive to us, and guidance met our expectations. We see no change to the strong optical fiber growth opportunity ahead of Corning, but investors have grown pessimistic on artificial intelligence stocks of late. We like this reactive selloff as a buying opportunity.

• Optical fiber remains Corning’s primary growth driver, and enterprise sales rose 65% year over year. We expect 50% annualized growth through 2030 for enterprise fiber revenue, led by AI buildouts and long-term supply agreements with the likes of Meta and Amazon.
• We see optical fiber growth enduring over the medium term, supported by continued AI spending and increasing optical penetration in AI infrastructure, including scale-up networks. We believe scale-up optics can lead to a growth acceleration in 2028 and beyond.

The bottom line: We maintain our $155 fair value estimate as results and guidance met our model, and our long-term forecast is largely unchanged. With shares down more than 50% in the last month and no meaningful change in fundamentals, Corning looks attractive for long-term investors.

• We believe too much optimism was priced in at Corning’s latest peak in June 2026 (at $255 per share), but now AI fears have overshot to the downside. We expect stellar total revenue growth at 20% annualized through 2030, and investors can now get this growth at a discount.
• To support our valuation, investors need to believe in management’s Springboard targets, with Corning reaching $40 billion annualized revenue exiting 2030. We model in line with this, which implies valuing Corning at just 15 times 2030 earnings.