A glass company rises on demand for fiber-optic cables and data-center boom

Shares of Corning climbed as much as 8% during intraday trading on Tuesday, turning the stock into one of the biggest gainers among S&P 500 stocks. The stock is up more than 64% since the beginning of the year.

Adjusted earnings per share were $0.54 on core sales of $3.73 billion, beating analyst expectations of $0.52 per share on sales of $3.72 billion. Core revenue rose 8% year over year and EPS grew more than 20%.

The glass company is riding on businesses’ demand for generative AI. Corning said that sales were primarily driven by record growth in the enterprise portion of its Optical Communications business, which sells fiber-optic cables for companies building data centers. The segment saw a 36% annual growth in sales. 

Corning also forecasted strong growth for the last quarter of 2024, expecting core sales of about $3.75 billion and core EPS between $0.53 and $0.57. Wall Street expected $0.53 per share, according to FactSet.

Worth noting: when Corning got investors overhyped about its second quarter in July — and then delivered a disappointing Q3 revenue forecast two weeks later — prices were down 6.9%. Corning seems to have learned its lesson about expectation management.