Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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The good news here is we are starting to see them get non-correlated again. So we are starting to see that go back to historical patterns. Now if you ask me which one I would choose reverting to mean on the absolute level of revenues or reverting to mean on our level of diversification? I choose more revenue, but we are already seeing the progress on sort of what should be our long-term effects of dampening of volatility. That was more than…

Steven Fox: Okay.

Wendell Weeks: … you wanted to know, isn’t it?

Steven Fox: No. No. That’s really interesting. That gave me a list of thought to…

Wendell Weeks: Yeah.

Steven Fox: I appreciate it. Thank you.

Ann Nicholson: Thanks, Steve. We will take one more question.

Operator: Our last question comes from the line of Josh Spector with UBS. Your line is now open.

Josh Spector: Yeah. Hi. Thanks for squeezing me in. So just as you think about your, I guess, pent-up revenue potential here, that $3 billion, depending on when that comes back, maybe it’s one year to three years depending on kind of how strong or weak the macro is, how do you think about your capital investment in light of that? You need to invest as much as you have over the last few years or is this a chance for you to step back on that and that markets tighten before you think about growth in that?

Wendell Weeks: I will start and then Ed can go after me, right? That’s why we use the term minimal cash investment, right? We have got in place the capabilities and the capacity we need to support that $3 billion, right? So we do believe that you should see very muted CapEx and very high free cash flow conversion. But Ed, why don’t you add?

Ed Schlesinger: Yeah. I would agree and I would say you are starting to see our capital spending coming down right now, you will continue to see that come down as we go through the fourth quarter and into next year as we finish up some of the things that we have been working on. So I agree with Wendell that we can support that and if there’s something new that’s not in that or something beyond that, we will talk about it with you all with respect to capital. But I think you can think of our conversion as being better than it has been over the last period of time, a couple of years.

Wendell Weeks: And what we are — you are looking at here is, again, it’s very unusual, which is sort of weird cycle with the pandemic and post-pandemic times is, I can’t think of a time, right, where we had the opportunity to generate as much revenue with capability sets that we have got ready to go in such a fast time period. I mean it’s — so the incrementals here, they are a lot of set new records for us. That’s what we are going to be seeking to do and that’s the balance we are seeking to strike as we adjust to the run rate of today, we want to maintain that opportunity, because the power of that to create value for our shareholders is really, really powerful and interesting.

Ann Nicholson: Thank you, Wendell. Thank you, Josh. I will wrap up for today. Thank you for joining us. Before we close, I wanted to let everyone know that we will be attending the UBS Technology Conference on November 28th. Thank you, Josh. Additionally, we will host management visits to investor offices in select cities. And finally, a web replay of today’s call will be available on our site starting later this morning. Once again, thank you all for joining us. Operator, that concludes our call. You can disconnect all lines.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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