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Wednesday January 24, 4:21 pm Eastern Time
Corning sees softness in telecoms market in Q1
(UPDATE: Adds details, paragraphs 1, 4-5)
NEW YORK, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Corning Inc. (NYSE:GLW - news), the world's biggest maker of fiber-optic cable, said on Wednesday its fourth-quarter
profits more than doubled, but warned that the overall telecommunications market may experience softness in the first quarter.
Corning said fourth-quarter pro forma profits rose to $314.6 million, or 34 cents a share, compared with $142.2 million, or 18 cents a share a year ago. Wall
Street had expected the company to earn 28 cents a share, according to research firm First Call/Thomson Financial.
Revenues soared 52 percent to $2.1 billion. The quarterly results exceeded the company's recent guidance and reflected the insatiable demand for fiber cable,
the backbone of telecommunications and the Internet.
Citing ``softness'' in the telecommunications market, Corning widened its first-quarter earnings guidance to a range of 28 cents to 31 cents a share, compared
with the previous guidance of 29 to 30 cents a share.
It also said its optical fiber and photonics customers had indicated that their order rate may be lower-than-expected in the first half of the year.
Shares of Corning closed at $70-1/4, up 1/4, on the New York Stock Exchange before the announcement. It has gained nearly 64 percent in the past year and
outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 index by about 77 percent. Optical equipment stocks were one of the few sectors to buck the broad sell-off in
technology stocks last year. |
