Corning joins the tracked set today with fourteen quarters built from its own XBRL filings and, for the most recent quarter, the Exhibit 99.1 it filed on 28 July 2026. The June quarter scores 45.4 on the Rule of 40 — the first quarter above the bar in the whole stored history, and the top of a climb that started at -11.6 in the March 2024 quarter.
The climb
| Quarter | Revenue | YoY | FCF | FCF margin | R40 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 Q1 | $2.98B | -6.4% | -$156M | -5.2% | -11.6 |
| 2024 Q2 | $3.25B | +0.2% | +$279M | +8.6% | +8.8 |
| 2024 Q3 | $3.39B | +6.9% | +$482M | +14.2% | +21.1 |
| 2024 Q4 | $3.50B | +16.9% | +$369M | +10.5% | +27.5 |
| 2025 Q1 | $3.45B | +16.0% | -$57M | -1.7% | +14.4 |
| 2025 Q2 | $3.86B | +18.8% | +$400M | +10.4% | +29.2 |
| 2025 Q3 | $4.10B | +20.9% | +$450M | +11.0% | +31.9 |
| 2025 Q4 | $4.22B | +20.4% | +$620M | +14.7% | +35.1 |
| 2026 Q1 | $4.14B | +20.0% | +$30M | +0.7% | +20.8 |
| 2026 Q2 | $4.51B | +16.6% | +$1,295M | +28.7% | +45.4 |
Read the growth column and the June quarter looks like a step down: +16.6% against +20.0%, +20.4% and +20.9% before it. The score went up 24.6 points anyway, because free cash flow went from $30 million to $1,295 million — a 28.7% margin, nearly twice the next highest quarter in the series.
Corning's first quarters are always the cash hole
This is the part worth knowing before treating 45.4 as a run rate. Corning's March quarters consume cash and its June quarters recover it, every year in the series:
| Q1 free cash flow | Q2 free cash flow | Swing |
|---|---|---|
| 2023: -$431M | +$231M | +$662M |
| 2024: -$156M | +$279M | +$435M |
| 2025: -$57M | +$400M | +$457M |
| 2026: +$30M | +$1,295M | +$1,265M |
The pattern is the same every year; the size is not. The 2026 swing is about two and a half times the prior three years' average, and it comes from $1,717 million of operating cash flow in one quarter against $422 million of capital expenditure. For scale, Corning's whole 2025 operating cash flow was $2,695 million.
One segment is the entire story
| June 2026 segment | Core sales | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Optical Communications | $2,072M | +32% |
| Glass Innovations | $1,463M | +1% |
| Automotive | $471M | +2% |
| Solar | $438M | +90% |
| Life Sciences & Emerging Growth | $294M | -15% |
Optical is 44% of core sales and grew 32%; the other four grew 7.5% combined, and most of that is Solar coming off a small base. Within Optical, Enterprise Networks grew 65%, and segment net income grew 77% to $438 million — faster than sales, which is the part that shows up in the cash line.
The customer disclosures behind that are recent and specific: an up-to-$6 billion Meta agreement announced with the Q4 2025 results in January 2026; a multiyear, multibillion-dollar Amazon agreement for the fibre, cable and connectivity in its US data centres; and an NVIDIA partnership under which Corning expands US optical connectivity manufacturing 10x and US fibre capacity by more than 50%.
What the site stores, and what it does not
The series here is GAAP: net sales, diluted EPS and gross margin as filed, and free cash flow as operating cash flow less capital expenditure. Corning leads with core figures — core sales of $4.74 billion and core EPS of $0.78 for the June quarter against GAAP sales of $4.505 billion and GAAP EPS of $0.64 — and its segment table is on the core basis, which is why the segment sales above add to more than the consolidated GAAP line.
Corning's own plan is a $20 billion annualised sales run rate by the end of 2026 and $40 billion by the end of 2030, a 19% sales CAGR from Q4 2026 to Q4 2030. The next print, due in late October, is the first test of whether a September quarter can hold a score the June quarter reached partly on seasonal cash timing.
