Corning Incorporated

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you would need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. And to withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would like now to turn the conference over to Chris Keenan, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. Welcome to Corning's third quarter 2026 earnings call. With me today are Wendell Weeks, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President, 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 will 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 third quarter, the difference between GAAP and core EPS principally reflects adjustments for hedged exposures along with discrete tax items. 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, and we encourage you to follow along. They are also available on our website for downloading. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Wendell.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Today, we announced outstanding third quarter results year over year. We grew sales 19% to $5.1 billion and grew EPS significantly faster at 36% to $0.91, both exceeding guidance. We expanded gross margin 150 basis points to 40.5%. We increased operating margin 310 basis points to 22.7%, and we improved ROIC 330 basis points to 16.7%, all while delivering $661 million of free cash flow after investing over a half a billion dollars in capacity to support future growth.