Corning Incorporated announced its fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 results and provided its outlook for first-quarter 2025.
Wendell P. Weeks, chairman and chief executive officer, said, “We had another outstanding quarter. We grew core sales 18 percent year over year to USD 3.9 billion and grew core EPS 46 percent to USD 0.57 while expanding core operating margin by 220 basis points to 18.5 percent. We also expanded core ROIC 390 basis points to 12.7 percent. Additionally, we closed out a strong year of free cash flow generation, delivering USD 1.25 billion for 2024, up 42 percent.”
Weeks continued, “Clearly, we’re off to a terrific start on our high-confidence ‘Springboard’ plan to add more than USD 3 billion in annualized sales, and to achieve operating margin of 20 percent, by the end of 2026. Based on our outperformance, we plan to upgrade this high-confidence plan at our investor event in March. We’re capturing significant sales growth, with powerful incremental profit and cash flow, as upward cyclical and secular trends drive demand for our products and capabilities.”
Ed Schlesinger, executive vice president and chief financial officer, said, “We outperformed in the fourth quarter, driven by strong adoption of our new products for Gen AI, which drove sales growth of 93 percent year over year in the Enterprise portion of Optical Communications. We also successfully implemented double-digit price increases in Display Technologies to ensure we can maintain stable U.S. dollar net income in a weaker yen environment, and we expect to deliver segment net income of USD 900 million to USD 950 million in 2025 and to maintain net income margin of 25 percent.”
Schlesinger continued, “In the first quarter, we expect core sales to grow 10 percent year over year to approximately USD 3.6 billion, with core EPS growing approximately 30 percent to a range of USD 0.48 to USD 0.52.”
The full report is available here.