‘Passive Optics’ to Grow by Double Digits in Next Few Years: Corning CSO

All Corning businesses are “continuing to perform well” in the current quarter, “in line” with expectations, except for display technologies, Executive Vice President-Chief Strategy Officer Jeff Evenson told a Goldman Sachs investor conference Tuesday. Panel maker output declined in August “from already low levels” due to “rolling power outages” in China, he said. “This reduces our outlook for display glass volume in the quarter,” he said. “Consequently, we now anticipate the third quarter coming in at the bottom or slightly below” the guidance Corning gave July 26 when it said display glass volume would decline by a mid-teen percentage sequentially from Q2, he said. Corning thinks the outlook for the display market is positive over the “medium and long term,” said Evenson. “As people are doing more things at home, as they're looking to upgrade to better entertainment experiences, the use of larger, more lifelike displays, we think, will continue to be a priority.” The COVID-19 pandemic “induced a lot of advanced purchases, probably accelerated those trends, and pushed us up above the normal range of large TV units,” which customarily number between 225 million and 235 million sets a year, he said. Corning’s view is that TV unit sales for 2022 will be “in the vicinity of what they were last year” but “could be a little down,” he said. Optical communications was Corning’s “biggest growth driver” in Q2, rising 10% sequentially and 22% year over year to $1.3 billion, said Evenson. The world has installed enough glass “to go to the sun and back about 20 times” since Corning invented “low-loss optical fiber” in 1970, he said. Yet only about 19% of Americans “connect through fiber in their homes,” he said. “We believe that the industry is at the beginning of a large multiyear wave of growth.” The combination of private network and public infrastructure investments “will create double-digit market growth for passive optics over the next few years,” he said.