Earnings Recap — Q2 FY2026
CY Q3 2026 · Reported July 28, 2026 · Beat 7 of last 7 quarters
The Buildout is a website built on agentic AI tools, currently in beta, and could have factual errors.
Corning's Q2 results reinforce the accelerating AI infrastructure buildout, with optical demand for Gen AI nearly doubling and enterprise sales up 65% YoY. The company's expanded Springboard plan and new long-term agreements with NVIDIA and Amazon signal sustained hyperscale investment in optical connectivity, which is critical for scaling AI data centers. The potential for optical Scale-Up and photonics could significantly increase fiber content per GPU, further driving demand for Corning's products.
Corning delivered strong Q2 2026 results with sales up 17% YoY to $4.74B and EPS up 30% to $0.78, both above guidance. Optical Communications led growth with sales up 32% to $2.07B and net income up 77% to $438M, driven by 65% YoY growth in Enterprise and near-doubling of Gen AI product sales. Solar sales grew 90% YoY to $438M, though the segment posted a net loss of $7M due to an extended maintenance shutdown and equipment upgrade. The company also announced new multiyear agreements with NVIDIA and Amazon during the quarter.
Management reiterated its upgraded Springboard plan: $20B annualized sales run-rate by end-2026, $30B by end-2028, and $40B by end-2030, with a 19% sales CAGR from Q4 2026 to Q4 2030 and earnings growing faster than sales. They expect to hit the $20B run-rate by end of 2026 and will update guidance when providing Q4 guidance. Q3 2026 guidance: sales of $4.9B–$5.0B (up ~16% YoY) and core EPS of $0.85–$0.89 (up ~28% YoY). They plan to invest ~$2B in CapEx for the year to support optical growth. They also expect solar sales and profitability to improve starting in Q3.
“We're entering a new phase of accelerating growth. We expect to deliver a sales CAGR of 19% and from quarter 4 2026 to quarter 4 2030, while growing earnings faster than sales, with significantly higher returns on invested capital and substantially more free cash flow.”
on Springboard growth plan
“We continue to have the enviable situation of if we could make more, we could sell more. And especially if we could make more of our most innovative products, we see nothing but growing appetite for these new high-density product sets that we started on so long ago that are definitely gaining and accelerating in their adoption rate.”
on Optical demand
“So we see no real change inside the real ecosystem. There is much less drama and what it looks like from the people outside of it. We're doing the steady work that it takes to build a $10 billion new photonics platform and bringing a significant new technical node to overall AI, which is scale up, which is where the biggest opportunity is for us.”
on Photonics and Scale-Up
Why is there limited 4Q growth given the improving optical capacity and solar facility migration?
Ed Schlesinger explained that the Q3 guide implies hitting the $20B run-rate a quarter early, and growth is expected to accelerate from there. Wendell Weeks added that they didn't want to upgrade the Springboard plan again after doing so in May, and will update when providing Q4 guidance.
Has anything changed versus 2 months ago regarding photonics and Scale-Up, given industry chatter about supply chain readiness and delays?
Wendell Weeks said there is no change to their fundamental beliefs, and that the ecosystem is less dramatic than external speculation. He noted they are doing steady work to build a $10B photonics platform and that they haven't provided specific photonics guidance for next year.
What is the mixture of optical business covered under long-term agreements, and what about pricing for customers not under LTAs?
Wendell Weeks said the majority of optical business will be under LTAs as major capacity expansions are underpinned by such agreements. On pricing, he emphasized that profitability improvement comes from delivering innovations that reduce customer costs, not just raising fiber prices, and that they capture a portion of the value created.