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.
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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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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.

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Q4 2024

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

legacy

Corning

corning

Welcome to the Corning Incorporated Quarter 4 twenty twenty four Earnings Call. It is my pleasure to introduce to you Ann Nicholson, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Corning's Q4 2024 earnings call. With me today are Wendell Week, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Ed Sleipinger, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I'd 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'll 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 Q4, the differences between GAAP and core primarily reflected non cash mark to market adjustments associated with the company's translated earnings contracts and Japanese yen denominated debt, as well as constant currency adjustments and other non cash charges. As a reminder, the mark to market accounting has no impact on our cash flow.

A reconciliation of core results to the comparable GAAP value can be found 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. We encourage you to follow along. They're also available on our website for downloading.

And now, I'll turn the call over to Wendell.

Thank you, Anne, and good morning, everyone. Today, we announced 4th quarter and full year 2024 results. We had another outstanding quarter. We grew sales 18% year over year to a record $3,900,000,000 and grew EPS 46% to $0.57 We expanded operating margin by 2 20 basis points to 18.5%. We also expanded return on invested capital 390 basis points to 12.7%.

Additionally, for the full year, we generated strong free cash flow, delivering $1,250,000,000 for 2024, up 42%. Overall, these results capped off a terrific 1st year of SpringBoard. So I want to review our performance in the context of our SpringBoard plan. As we've laid out for you, we're pursuing growth across the company of $8,000,000,000 in annualized sales run rate by the end of 2028, driven by the convergence of upward cyclical and secular trends in our markets. And we've taken this internal non risk adjusted plan and created a high confidence plan for investors.

First, we focused on a 3 year time period, which reflects a $5,000,000,000 non risk adjusted opportunity by the end of 2026. 2nd, we probabilistically adjusted for different potential outcomes, including market dynamics, timing of secular trends, successful adoption of our innovations, as well as volume, pricing and market share across all of our businesses and the potential that some of our markets may go through down cycles. And this is how we formulated our high confidence SpringBoard plan to add more than $3,000,000,000 in annualized sales and to achieve operating margin of 20% by the end of 2026. Now it's important to remember, we purposely drew the $3,000,000,000 SpringBoard plant as a wedge. We weren't trying to guide every quarter for the next 12 quarters.

So as you can see, we're off to a great start. Our quarter 4 sales were $3,900,000,000 So in year 1 of the plan, we added $2,400,000,000 to our annualized sales run rate from our SpringBoard base. And on that strong sales growth, we demonstrated the powerful incrementals that are embedded in our plan. Year over year, in the Q4, we expanded operating margin by 2 20 basis points to 18.5%. We grew EPS 46 percent to $0.57 We expanded ROIC 3.90 basis points to 12.7 percent.

And we closed out a strong year of free cash flow generation, delivering $1,250,000,000 in 2024, up 42%. So what's driving our outperformance versus our high confidence plan? When we introduced SpringBoard, we told you that it was a milestone based plan. In 2024, we hit key strategic milestones in display and optical. In display, our SpringBoard plan is centered on maintaining stable U.

S. Dollar net income. To achieve this in a weaker yen environment, we raised glass prices in the second half of twenty twenty four to deliver consistent profitability in this segment. We expect to deliver net income of 900 dollars to $950,000,000 this year and to deliver net income margin of 25% consistent with the last 5 years. Overall, we're providing a strong base in display for our SpringBoard growth.

In Optical Communications, our SpringBoard plan is about revenue growth as upward cyclical and secular trends converge to drive demand for our unique capabilities. We introduced new Gen AI products in June of 2024 and we said we expected to grow our enterprise business at a 25% compound annual growth rate through 2027. Demand for our new gen AI products grew each quarter and sales in the enterprise portion of our optical business grew 93% year over year in the 4th quarter. And for the full year, enterprise grew to a record $2,000,000,000 up 49% year over year. That growth reflects the Gen AI opportunity inside the data center.

We've also introduced a set of innovations to help our customers build a new network to interconnect AI enabled data centers between the cities. As part of an agreement with Lumin Technologies, which reserves 10% of our global fiber capacity for 20252026, we launched the first outside plant deployment of Corning's new GenAI fiber and cable system that enables Lumin to fit anywhere from 2 to 4 times the amount of fiber into their existing conduit. And just this month, we started shipping and Lumin has begun deploying our new data center interconnect products. Overall, strong customer response to our new products drove sales of $1,400,000,000 in optical in the 4th quarter, reflecting 51% year over year growth. And we expect continued growing demand in optical in 2025 beyond.

So I've highlighted just 2 of the key milestones that are contributing to the outperformance of our SpringBoard plan in year 1. We're pursuing a rich opportunity set that extends across our portfolio, including solar, automotive and mobile consumer electronics. And the progress we've made increases the probability that our sales will be above our high confidence sales run rate by the end of 2026. As a result, we are planning to upgrade our $3,000,000,000 SpringBoard plan at our March investor event. So let's take a moment to help you understand how we're thinking about it.

First, I've already shared with you that our businesses are collectively pursuing a non risk adjusted plan to add $8,000,000,000 in annualized sales run rate by the end of 2028 $5,000,000,000 by the end of 2026. Now we've just completed our strategy planning cycle and we remain comfortable that those targets are appropriate. So we're not changing our non risk adjusted plan at this time. Of course, our internal plans won't be exactly right on everything, including timing, because that's just not how the future works. But the benefit of our balanced portfolio is that we know many of our exciting opportunities will come to fruition.

We translated our non risk adjusted plan into a high confidence investable thesis for you by accounting for multiple potential outcomes. And we provided you our high confidence plan to add more than $3,000,000,000 in annualized sales by the end of 2026. So where do we stand today? Even though we're only 1 year into the 3 year high confidence plan, our progress against key milestones increases the potential for positive outcomes and therefore our likelihood of success. For example, the tremendous response to our Gen AI products puts us on the positive side of that distribution.

Our display pricing also puts us on the positive side. And you're seeing that positive momentum in our numbers. So as I just shared with you, as a result of our progress across our portfolio, we will upgrade our $3,000,000,000 high confidence plan at our March investor event. Before I turn things over to Ed, here's what I'd like to leave you with today. Our quarter 4 was an outstanding quarter that capped off a terrific 1st year of our SpringBoard plan.

We added $2,400,000,000 to our annualized sales run rate in quarter 4. And as we grow sales, we're growing profitability at a significantly faster rate. Overall, we positioned our businesses to benefit from a convergence of cyclical and secular trends to drive growth across the company through 2026 and beyond. We've got many more milestones ahead and I look forward to sharing more detail with you on the strong progress we're making when we get together in March. With that, I'll turn it over to Ed.

Thank you, Wendell. Good morning, everyone. As you just heard, we had another outstanding quarter and completed a strong 1st year of our SpringBoard plan. Cyclical and secular trends are driving demand for our products. We have the capacity and technical capabilities in place to add more than $3,000,000,000 in annualized sales by the end of 2026, and the cost and capital are already reflected in our financials.

So this means that as we grow, we expect to grow profit significantly faster than sales. And that's exactly what you saw in the Q4. Sales grew 18% year over year to $3,900,000,000 and EPS grew 46% to $0.57 more than 2 times the rate of sales. Operating margin expanded 220 basis points to 18.5%, marking strong progress on the target we have shared to achieve 20% operating margin by the end of 2026. Overall, it was a terrific quarter and we expect our momentum to continue in 2025.

In the Q1, we expect sales to grow 10% year over year to approximately $3,600,000,000 with core EPS growing approximately 30% to a range of 0.48 dollars to $0.52 Based on our strong performance, we continue to track ahead of our SpringBoard plan. So this morning, I want to share more details and perspective on our quarter and full year results. For the full year, we grew sales 7 percent to $14,500,000,000 At the same time, EPS grew 15% to 1.96 dollars Gross margin expanded 190 basis points to 38.2 percent and operating margin expanded a full percentage point to 17.5%. We increased free cash flow by $373,000,000 versus the prior year to $1,250,000,000 Moving to the segments. In Optical Communications, 4th quarter sales were $1,370,000,000 up 51% year over year.

Full year sales grew 16% to $4,660,000,000 In our enterprise business, sales were $686,000,000 for the quarter, up 93% year over year, driven by the continued strong adoption of our new Gen AI products. This marks another record quarter of growth in this business. And for the full year, enterprise grew 49% to $2,000,000,000 We also grew year over year in our carrier business in the Q4 as customers continued to buy closer to their rates of deployment. Net income for the full year and 4th quarter reflected strong incremental profit on higher volume. For the Q4, net income for the Optical Communications segment grew 120% year over year to $194,000,000 and for the full year, net income grew 28 percent to $612,000,000 Overall, we expect our unique capabilities in optical communications to drive continued growth in 2025 and beyond.

In Carrier, we expect deployments to increase in 2025 as indicated by Carrier customer conversations and public announcements. We also expect growing demand for our connectivity products for GenAI and we're just beginning to ship our new data center interconnect products to Lumin in the Q1. Moving to Display Technologies, 4th quarter sales were $971,000,000 up 12% year over year. Net income was $262,000,000 Full year sales grew 10% to $3,870,000,000 Net income was up 19%. The retail and glass market grew year over year as measured in square feet, driven by larger average screen size.

Late in the quarter, panel makers increased their utilization rates as set makers upped their orders driven by government stimulus in China. We expect panel makers to continue at these utilization rates in the Q1 of 2025. As we shared with you in September and on our Q3 earnings call, we raised glass prices to deliver consistent profitability in the segment. We have successfully implemented double digit price increases in the second half of twenty twenty four to ensure we can maintain stable U. S.

Dollar net income in a weaker yen environment. We continue to expect to deliver net income of $900,000,000 to $950,000,000 in 2025 and net income margin of 25%, consistent with the last 5 years. Turning to Specialty Materials. In the Q4, sales were $515,000,000 up 9% year over year and down 6% sequentially. Full year sales grew 8% to $2,000,000,000 as we advanced our more corning content strategy in both Gorilla and Advanced Optics.

Net income grew 40% year over year in the 4th quarter to $81,000,000 and was up 29% for the full year to $260,000,000 reflecting strong incrementals on higher volumes as well as strong demand for our premium glass innovations. In Environmental Technologies, our 4th quarter sales were $397,000,000 down 7% year over year, driven by weaker light duty and heavy duty markets in Europe. Full year sales were down 6% year over year as we continued to experience weaker global heavy duty markets, particularly in Europe. Net income of $81,000,000 for Q4 was down 17% year over year reflecting lower volume. Net income for the full year was $358,000,000 down 7% on lower sales.

In 2025, industry analysts expect the global light duty market to remain flat and for the heavy duty market to be down slightly, primarily in North America. In life sciences, 4th quarter sales were $250,000,000 up 3% year over year and net income grew 6% year over year. Full year sales were $979,000,000 up 2% as the market stabilized throughout the year. Net income grew 26% significantly faster than sales. And finally, in Hemlock and Emerging Growth businesses, 4th quarter sales were $373,000,000 up 5% year over year.

Full year sales were $1,280,000,000 As you can see, we are making strong progress on SpringBoard. And as we enter 2025, we expect our momentum to continue. In the Q1, we expect sales to grow 10% year over year to approximately $3,600,000,000 with core EPS growing approximately 30% to a range of $0.48 to $0.52 Additionally, we have hedged our yen exposure for 20252026. We also have hedges in place beyond 2026. In 2025, we will be resetting our yen core rate to 1.20 yen to the dollar, consistent with our hedge rate.

We have reflected the yen 1.20 core rate in our Q1 guidance. We do not plan to recast our 2024 financials because we expect to maintain the same profitability in display at the new core rate. And as I said earlier, in display, we expect to deliver net income of $900,000,000 to $950,000,000 in 2025 and net income margin of 25% consistent with the last 5 years. Now I'd like to spend a minute on capital allocation. I told you that we have the capacity and technical capabilities in place to add more than $3,000,000,000 in annualized sales by the end of 2026.

So we expect to deliver strong incremental profit and cash flow as we capture the sales growth opportunity outlined in our SpringBoard plan. One proof point from the 1st year of the plan is that we grew free cash flow by 42% in 2024 to $1,250,000,000 And as our execution of SpringBoard continues, we expect to generate significant cash in 2025. Our capital allocation priorities remain the same. We prioritize investing for organic growth opportunities. We believe this creates the most value for our shareholders over the long term.

In 2025, we expect our capital expenditures to be approximately $1,300,000,000 We also seek to maintain a strong and efficient balance sheet. We're in great shape here. We have one of the longest debt tenors in the S and P 500. Our current average debt maturity is about 23 years with only about $1,200,000,000 in debt coming due over the next 5 years and we have no significant debt coming due in any given year. And finally, we expect to continue our strong track record of returning excess cash to shareholders.

We started to buy back shares in the 2nd quarter and we have continued to do so throughout 2024. So as I wrap up today, I'd like to reiterate that we had an outstanding Q4 that capped off a strong 1st year of SpringBoard. Compared with Q4 2023, our starting point for SpringBoard, sales grew 18% year over year to $3,900,000,000 EPS grew 46% to $0.57 and operating margin expanded 220 basis points to 18.5%, marking strong progress on the target we've shared to achieve 20% operating margin by the end of 2026. Looking ahead, we expect 10% year over year sales growth in the Q1 with EPS growing about 3 times faster. And we expect to sustain our momentum throughout 2025.

In total, we're tracking ahead of our high confidence plan to add more than $3,000,000,000 in annualized sales by the end of 2026. And we look forward to our March investor event when we plan to provide you with an update to our high confidence SpringBoard plan. Thank you everyone. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Anne.

Thanks, Ed. Okay, operator, we're ready for the first question.

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Samik Chatterjee with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Hi, thanks for the question. This is Joe Cardoso on for Samik. I guess maybe just for my one question, and I'm not trying to get ahead of the investor event, but maybe Wendell, can you just flush out your comments a bit more around an upgrade or the potential upgrade to the risk adjusted plan? However, you're still feeling comfortable around the non risk adjusted plan. Obviously, the implications there is that the upgrade could land somewhere between those two plans, at least for the year 2026 targets that you provided.

And if so, maybe can you just help us think about the lingering risk or the major risks from your perspective that Corning is still looking to navigate achieve the non risk adjusted plan at least relative to the 2026 targets? Thank you.

So thanks for the question, Joe. I think actually in your question, you had the answer, which is yes, you understand exactly what we're saying. When we go through our full strategic review, we work our way through all of those various scenarios and where we came back is that that long term plan to generate $8,000,000,000 that target remained quite appropriate. And that what's happened is that if you take a look at the full distribution of potential outcomes that the probability has shifted towards higher numbers being more probable with underneath between that 8% and our risk adjusted plan. So we will have a number that will be between those 2 and we will fill that out in March.

And at that time, what we will also do is we will talk some about the milestones that are ahead. Was that answer clear or did I make it more confusing, Joe?

No, no, very clear. I guess Wendell, what I was just trying to get at more is just around like the risk that you still see ahead. I think at the time or even in the call itself today, you mentioned that obviously optical is tracking ahead. And I think the risks back in June, you talked about timing around projects getting done and then display obviously was another one of the bigger risks relative to the plan. So as you think about today and now starting to get ahead of some of those are those check marks around some of those risks being in the rearview mirror.

I guess as you think about the plan, which are the major risks that are still ahead that you think are still left to navigate?

So I think about a little less as risk and more as milestones. So for instance, let's stay in OTO for a moment. We see carrier growing year over year as their deployment rates have as their purchases from us are now approaching their deployment rates. So as part of our cyclical trend there, what we said is that the carriers had overdone inventory relative to deployment and those two things would come into line and then we'd start to see recovery. We see the beginning of that, right, but we'd like to see more.

Similarly, in our solar map, right, we have several milestones that we'd like to see be completed for that business to become the scale of the opportunity that you see reflected in our non risk adjusted plan. Similarly, we have some major innovations in mobile consumer electronics that drive more corning into that relatively stable market as the market adopts more and more of our innovations. Similarly in automotive, both our automotive glass, there's key milestones to hit, as well as adoption of the GPF technology in the U. S. ICE market.

So that just gives you an example of some of the key milestones that are still ahead for us to hit the full non risk adjusted plan. Was that helpful, Joe?

Yes, Wendell. Thank you. That's great. Appreciate the color.

Our next question comes from the line of Mehdi Hosseini with Susquehanna. Your line is now open.

Hi. Congrats on the quarter. This is Bastian filling in for Mehdi. So you expect carrier deployments to increase in 2025 and growing demand of connectivity products. Is that ex Lumin?

So that was my first question. My second question is, could you maybe give us a little bit of color on where you're guiding on those 10% year on year sales growth?

bit of color on if you're still seeing enterprise being strong? And as well, if you could touch a little bit on the display market?

Yes. Thank you for those questions. So first on carrier. So yes, we did start shipping Lumin right here just now in the Q1 and that will ramp as we go through the year. When we talk about carrier deployments increasing, I would say it's broader than Lumin.

But I would also say that the number one indicator is what we see in our order book. So we are not necessarily starting out right here expecting a big ramp in carrier deployments in the first half of twenty twenty five. So we expect carriers other than Lumin to increase deployments, but not so much early in the year. And then to your enterprise question, we definitely expect our momentum to continue into 2025 and certainly in the Q1, our year over year guide implies a strong enterprise segment in the Q1. And then I think your last part of your question was on the display market.

What I would say on display is we saw growth in glass in 2024 year over year, primarily from screen size. The IT market was also up year over year in that space. Panel makers ran relatively strong in the 4th quarter. We're expecting them to kind of run at that rate as they go into calendar year 2025. That said, we provided you with a guide for full year display on net income, which of course implies a sales guide as well.

So it's possible that the back half is a little bit lower in display if the front half is a little bit stronger. So we would expect screen size to continue year over year to really be driving any growth in display in the glass market.

Our next question comes from the line of Asiya Merchant with Citi. Your line is now open.

Great. Thank you and congratulations on a great set of numbers. 2, if I may. The optical demand is obviously ramping up really well. Can you talk a little bit about how we should think about net income margins in that segment?

It expanded a little bit relative to the last quarter. Growth was on the top line pretty strong. So as we think about the momentum here and the drivers for growth in enterprise more strongly than carrier, how we should think about the net income margin performance in that segment? And the second one on cash flow, how we should think about free cash flow margins sort of as you guys progress towards your SpringBoard plan and exceed that SpringBoard plan, the high confidence SpringBoard plan, how we should think about free cash flow margins in 2025? Thank you.

Yes, and thanks, Asiya, and thanks for the nice comments. First on optical, I think the thing to think about is our sales have ramped significantly through the year, especially in enterprise and we're expecting that to continue. So we have some costs to actually be able to serve the higher sales and the expected higher sales that we have going into 2025 and that is having a little bit of an impact on our optical margins here in the Q4. So I would expect our margins to continue to accrete up in optical as we go into 2025. And then on cash, as we sort of started out the year, our expectation was that we wouldn't need to add a lot of capacity and that has turned out to be true and I think our capital guide continues to imply that.

So our free cash flow was up very nicely year over year and we expect free cash flow to continue to improve. I want to think a little bit about your question on margin, cash flow margin, so I'll come back to you on that. But the other thing I would add is that as we exited the year, we did build some working capital in AR and inventory. And again, I attribute that to just the ramp in sales. So that actually bodes well as we go into 2025.

Our next question comes from the line of Wamsi Mohan with Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Yes. Thank you so much. Wendell, your optical business is clearly benefiting from the Gen AI deployments. And we've heard a lot of market dislocation over the last week from DeepSeq. So I'm curious what your view is on DeepSeq's impact to AI build out more broadly and for Corning in particular?

Well, thanks for that opportunity, Wamsi. 1st and most importantly for Corning Investors, We don't see any negative impact on our SpringBoard plan to deliver our $3,000,000,000 plus revenue by the end of 2026 from the DeepSeq set of announcements. So from a Corning perspective, we don't see any significant impact. More broadly, I think you're interested in is, DeepSeq has actually been a topic of focus for the technical community for the last 2 or 3 months from when they first did their V3 late last year. To reduce the cost of training, they appear to have used both innovations that are already in use by the leaders in the space, as well as some innovations that are a little ahead of the industry at this time, right.

And I just think more will become public as to everything that went into their set of innovations as time goes by. Stepping back, I think what's super important to understand is that we need dramatic improvement in training and inference cost to make Gen AI into a highly sustainable business model and more importantly the productivity driver that we all hope it will be. So we need sort of order of magnitude type improvements. And so we should always do is expect there to be significant innovations are going to continue here, right. And in many ways, all of us in this space are counting on many more innovations to come, so that this realizes its ultimate potential.

There is nothing in all of this that would say the need for better compute and better communications doesn't make models better. Does that make sense to you, Wamsi?

Yes, yes. No, it does. I appreciate that answer. Thank you, Wendell. And one for Ed, if I could.

Just one quick clarification on the core rate of 120. Would this core rate be static again for a few years as you have had in the past? And that's my quick clarification. And secondarily, would you say that as you think about 2025 in your guidance for CapEx over here, you're just coming off a pretty low year of CapEx relative to last several years and it's ticking back up. Can you just help us think through what are the incremental places where investments are going on that incremental CapEx?

Yes. Maybe on CapEx, just real quick. We had been guiding around $1,200,000,000 for most of the year. We came in a little below that. There's always a little bit of timing in terms of how we're spending.

But I think the most important thing to think about is our depreciation is about $1,300,000,000 if we're spending capital at that level or below that level, we're really not adding any material capacity and our guide for next year is in line with that thinking. So we always need a little capacity here or there or we add technological innovation, capital for new technology, but that's how I'm thinking about it. We're really not adding anything significant in our 2025 guide. On the core rate, so maybe just stepping back, we've been talking about what we've been doing in display. So the most important thing is that we were able to raise price double digits in the back half and that's actually in our kind of guide or our run rate as we go forward.

We were able to hedge 20252026 at the 120 rate. So at least my expectation is no change for that time period. We also have hedges in place beyond 2026 and we'll come back as the year progresses and share our thoughts on how to think about it beyond that 2026 time window.

Our next question comes from the line of John Roberts with Mizuho. Your line is now open.

Thank you. How do you think about the risk of the bead program being reworked and maybe satellite playing a more significant role? It seems like this administration is willing to go back into programs already well underway.

Thanks for the question, John. Within our overall SpringBoard plan, one of the things we've accounted for in our sort of derating between non risk adjusted and our risk adjusted plan is how effective and how broadly BEAT would be used. We weren't counting on it to become any degree of revenue even in our non risk adjusted plan until 2026. So one of the things we updated as part of our strategy planning process was how do we feel about where fiber optics would deploy versus satellite being a better economic answer. After we work through all of those pieces, what we basically came back with were some modifications, but nothing that would change our fundamental springboard thesis, John.

And then maybe a quick one for Ed, but the Hemlock minority interest income surged, what's going on there and will you break out Hemlock sales beginning in the March quarter?

Yes. So two things, John. We have a few joint ventures that impact our minority interest line. Hemlock did actually have a strong Q4. A lot of their semiconductor polysilicon contracts are back end loaded.

So that does drive our minority interest up high in the Q4 or higher, just given the higher sales, higher income. And yes, our intention would be, as we go into 2025 to provide, some updates to our segment reporting. You've heard us talk about graduating our automotive glass business out and breaking out solar sort ofhemlock. So that continues to be our plans. And after we file our 10 ks and move past this year, we'll provide some more insight on that.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Niknam with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Hey, guys. Thanks so much for taking the question and congrats on the quarter. Just 2 for me. First on, I guess, new administration. And I'm wondering, has the prospect of newer tariffs implemented by the new U.

S. Administration hold forward any sort of demand or ordering activity into 4Q or even in the Q1? And then secondly, maybe for Ed, you talked about the healthy balance sheet position, ramping free cash flow, and you talked about buybacks. I'm just wondering, the dividend was relatively flat last year. How are you thinking about resuming dividend growth in the context of the success of SpringBoard seem to date?

Yes. Thanks, Matt. Appreciate the comments and the questions. So maybe I'll start with your second one. So yes, good cash flow.

We started buying back shares. We expect to continue to do that as we go forward. We haven't provided any specific target. I think on the dividend, we pay a very healthy dividend. I would like to see our payout ratio come down a little bit from where it is even today before we start to resume increasing the dividend.

But that's certainly not off the table for us as we go forward. Maybe on tariffs, I'll make a comment and Wendell can jump in if you want to add anything. I think 1st and foremost, I want to be very humble and admit that we don't actually know what's going to happen yet. There's a lot of proposals out there. So we are obviously tracking all of that and we're not going to react to things until they're really enacted.

A couple of things to consider for Corning. 1st and foremost, we manufacture generally where our customers are. So sort of from a direct impact of tariffs on us, on the things we make in importexport, there isn't a huge impact. There's a limited impact. It's not 0, but there's certainly a limited impact.

And we have the ability to move our supply chain a little bit and we certainly have the ability to raise price if that is something that is required to do. I think secondly, we manufacture a lot in the U. S. We're very much for advanced manufacturing in the U. S.

We have a big footprint in our optical business in fiber and cable. We produce environmental for our environmental business, our life sciences business, solar and we even make product for our mobile consumer electronics business in the U. S. So I think that actually puts us on the side of we like U. S.

Manufacturing and we are very supportive of that. So we will continue to track it, but right now I don't think we have anything that we would add to the external dialogue and feel free to jump in.

I think when you start to do fine tuning on models, right, some places to look. I think Ed is exactly right on our direct sales. We will see some differences in customer behavior. I think in our display business, we're seeing a little bit stronger panel maker utilization as they sort of get ready for what may or may not happen. But that's really a close in sort of modeling question, Matt.

I think Ed has got the fundamental thrust along with the humility that we have to bring to this broader question. Does that make sense to you, Matt?

Our next question comes from the line of Meta with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Great, thanks. A couple of quick questions for me. Maybe first, as you started to kind of get the Lumin orders early on, is that kind of tracking to kind of how you thought to the order patterns that you were expecting? And then maybe just a second question on Specialty Materials. Noted kind of it looked like there was an upgrade in the content with the S-twenty 5 phone from Samsung that just came out.

So just wondering if that kind of impacts the trajectory of the year on specialty materials? Thanks.

Corning (GLW) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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