How much a stock's price changes over time is a significant driver for most investors. Not only can price performance impact your portfolio, but it can help you compare investment results across sectors and industries as well.
Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.
What if you'd invested in Corning (GLW) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to GLW for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?
Corning's Business In-Depth
With that in mind, let's take a look at Corning's main business drivers.
New York-based Corning Incorporated started out as a glass business that was reincorporated in 1936. The company has since developed its glass technologies to produce advanced glass substrates that are used in a large number of applications across multiple markets. Corning reports results under six operating segments.
The Display Technologies segment (25% of total core sales in 2024) includes glass substrates that are commonly found in liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs, notebooks and flat-panel desktop personal computer (PC) monitors. The company’s specialty, active-matrix substrates improve the brightness and sharpness of images.
The company’s Optical Communications products (35.4%) may be categorized into two. The first category comprises cables. Products are typically sold to its own subsidiaries, which then distribute to end users. The second category is hardware and equipment, which comprises optical and copper connectivity products.
Automotive Business segment (12.7%) is created by separating the Automotive Glass Solutions business from the Hemlock and Emerging Growth Business and converging it with the Environmental Technologies segment in the first quarter of 2025. The segment also makes ceramic substrates required for mobile and stationary pollution and emission control systems. The primary users of Corning’s products are automotive and diesel engine manufacturers.
Specialty Materials (13.3%) include different formulations for glass, glass ceramics and fluoride crystals that render special properties to each separate substrate, making it suitable for specific industrial and commercial use.
Life Sciences segment (6.5%) products are sold under the Corning, Costar and Pyrex brands primarily for laboratory equipment, such as microplate products, coated slides, filter plates for genomics sample preparation, plastic cell culture dishes, flasks, cryogenic vials, roller bottles, mass cell culture products, liquid handling instruments, Pyrex glass beakers, serological pipettes, centrifuge tubes and laboratory filtration products. Hemlock and Emerging Growth Businesses, which include solar and semiconductor products and all other businesses that are not part of any other segments, accounted for 7.5% of total sales.
Bottom Line
Anyone can invest, but building a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of a few things: research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in Corning a decade ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.
According to our calculations, a $1000 investment made in January 2016 would be worth $5,541.79, or a gain of 454.18%, as of January 16, 2026, and this return excludes dividends but includes price increases.
The S&P 500 rose 269.32% and the price of gold increased 310.92% over the same time frame in comparison.
Analysts are anticipating more upside for GLW.
Corning's competitive strength lies in its focus on innovation. It continues to focus on developing state-of-the-art cover materials, which have been deployed on more than 8 billion devices. A broad product suite focused on the data center application, consisting of optical fiber, hardware and connectors, enables it to create optical solutions to meet evolving customer needs. This augurs well for its long-term growth. Collaboration with AUO Corporation will boost prospects in Automotive. However, end market diversification is limited within the Display and Optical segments, which account for more than half of total revenues. The company is exposed to significant customer concentration risk. Growing interest in other technologies, such as sapphire substrates, could hinder prospects. Soft demand in the Display Technologies is a concern.
Over the past four weeks, shares have rallied 7.61%, and there have been 1 higher earnings estimate revisions in the past two months for fiscal 2025 compared to none lower. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.
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Corning Incorporated (GLW): Free Stock Analysis ReportThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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