GLW - Corning Incorporated (GLW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-04-30 13:22:15 ET
Corning Incorporated (GLW)
Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call
April 30, 2024 8:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Ann Nicholson - VP of IR
Wendell Weeks - Chairman & CEO
Ed Schlesinger - EVP & CFO
Conference Call Participants
Wamsi Mohan - Bank of America
Meta Marshall - Morgan Stanley
Martin Yang - Oppenheimer
Samik Chatterjee - JPMorgan
Tim Long - Barclays
Asiya Merchant - Citi
Joshua Spector - UBS
Steven Fox - Fox Advisors
George Notter - Jefferies
Presentation
Operator
Welcome to the Corning Incorporated Quarter One 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] It is my pleasure to introduce to you, Ann Nicholson, Vice President of Investor Relations.
Ann Nicholson
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Corning's first quarter 2024 earnings call. With me today are Wendell Weeks, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Ed Schlesinger, 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 first quarter, the difference between GAAP and core EPS primarily reflected constant currency adjustments, translated earnings contracting and translation gains on Japanese yen denominated debt. 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 in 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 and they're also available on our website for downloading.
And now, I'll turn the call over to Wendell.
Wendell Weeks
Thank you, Ann. Good morning, everyone. Today we announced first 2024 results. Sales were nearly $3.3 billion and EPS was $0.38. Year-over-year gross margin grew 160 basis points to 36.8%, and free cash flow improved by $300 million. These results were at the high end of our guidance.
More importantly, while we are seeing encouraging signs of improving market conditions, we continue to expect that the first quarter will be the low quarter for the year. We are executing our plans to add more than $3 billion in annualized sales within the next three years and we already have the required capacity and capabilities in place.
As a result, we’re poised to deliver powerful incremental profits and cash flow and generate substantial shareholder value.
Last quarter, we outlined a framework, under which we expect to drive stronger returns on our existing innovation and capacity investments and we shared our expectation that these returns will begin in 2024. The framework has three primary components. First, we believe that the first quarter will be the lowest quarter for the year. We will improve from here.
Second, we expect to grow by more than $3 billion in annualized sales in the mid-term, which should redefine as within the next three years. The outlook in each of our markets remains positive and our market positions are quite strong....
Corning Incorporated (GLW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript