Corning Incorporated (GLW) Q3 2011 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Corning Incorporated Quarter 3 2011 Results. [Operator Instructions] It is my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Ken Sofio, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning. Welcome to Corning's third quarter call. This morning, Jim Flaws, Vice Chairman, Chief Financial Officer, will have some prepared remarks before we move to the Q&A. These remarks do contain forward-looking statements that fall within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. They involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially. These risks are detailed in the company's SEC reports. Jim?

Thanks, Ken. Good morning, everyone. Hopefully, you had a chance to read the press release we issued this morning on our third quarter results. If you haven't, a copy can be found on our Investor Relations website. We had a good quarter, with sales approaching $2.1 billion, which is up 30% year-over-year, and with EPS, excluding special items, at $0.48. In summary, Telecom, Environmental, Specialty Materials and Life Sciences all had significant year-over-year growth. Glass line in our wholly owned business -- Display business did better than our realized expectations from early September. SCP volumes did not decline as much as we anticipated but were still down significantly sequentially. Our quarter 3 results did benefit from the strengthening of the yen. I'll come back to the quarter in a minute, but I'd like to highlight our key messages this morning. First, third quarter glass volume at our wholly owned business was up sequentially in the mid-single digits but down more than 20% at SCP. We did regain share at our wholly owned business in Q3, but SCP lost some share. Second, price declines in Q3 were in line with our expectations. Third, retail demand for LCD televisions remained strong throughout September. The data we have so far for October in the U.S. also shows good demand. Despite the continued strong retail environment, panel makers ran at much lower utilization rates during the third quarter, especially in Korea. Strong retail demand in Q3, coupled with lower production rates, led to a significant contraction in supply chain inventory during the quarter. We believe supply chain inventories exited the quarter around 14 weeks. Looking ahead, we expect Korean panel maker utilization rates on average to be higher in Q4 than Q3. Utilization rates outside of Korea in Q4 will be comparable to Q3…

Great. Thank you, Jim. Robert, we're ready to take some questions now.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Amir Rozwadowski from Barclays Capital.

Jim, just as your closing comments, you spend a lot of time talking about sort of the retail demand on the end market versus sort of glass shipments. I mean, obviously, we're at historic lows here based on your estimate, and we started to see some of the Korean folks indicated that they're picking up utilization rate. When do you think that that transition could take place? I mean, are you seeing signs, any emerging signs that that transition can take place with glass shipments could more closely mirror retail demand here, or are you still cautious about that in terms of visibility? Because we are obviously becoming closer to the holiday season here, and it feels like at some point, there has to be a decision made in terms of utilization and increase in inventory in order to meet that demand.

Well, we have seen an increase in utilization in Korea already. So that's where the biggest reduction was in Q3, and we think that they've now increased and obviously have the capability of getting televisions to retail around the world for the holiday season. And as a reminder, in the U.S., television demand remains strong in January and February, driven, in some cases, by things like the Super Bowl. So we believe we are starting to see that. I can't say for sure that people won't drive inventory lower, but it definitely feels like there has been a response upward now after these cutbacks in Q3.

Do you feel from a channel inventory perspective that this is sort of the new level at which folks are going to be operating so that, perhaps a pickup in demand wouldn't necessarily result in increase in weeks of inventory, or do you feel like there has to be some level of snapback at some point to prior levels?

That's a great question, Amir. We've actually commissioned a project to determine, as this industry moves into maturity, whether, in fact, it can run without creating out-of-stocks at a lower level of inventory. There are some reason to think that in developed markets. On the other hand, we know the supply chain is actually longer to the less developed areas of the world where, of course, LCDs are now showing up in significant proportion. So we'll have a more definitive answer in quarter 1. I think our expectation is it's unlikely that we'll ever leap back up to the 17-week kind of level. We're hopeful that we can stay in the 13- to 14-week level. If we just stabilize there, then we could see this retail demand flow through to us as glassmakers, and that'd be great.

Fantastic. And then lastly, if I may, I know there was some comments in your prepared remarks around the Specialty Material growth and sort of lack of visibility in terms of forward growth outlook. I was wondering, obviously, our checks have been suggesting that tablet growth remains strong, smartphone growth remains fairly strong in this environment. How should we think about sort of the growth dynamics of that business? Do you expect that to be sort of dependent on specific product launches of your customers, or how should we think about sort of normalized growth levels there?

It's very hard for us to give you a percentage in growth. We do expect significant growth next year. We continue to have a smartphone area. More people are putting Gorilla on phones. We're not experiencing competition as we go to get on a new phone. It happens. People don't change glass on a phone mid-model. They do it when there's a new model. So for the year next year, we're expecting growth in volume terms. It's a little harder for us to predict quarter by quarter because we have no reliable inventory information in this business. And also because it's such a new business, our customers actually have manufacturing losses as they finish the glass to put it into phones or tablets, and we think they've been improving their yields, and that is having some impact on our demand right now. Our last comment would be that one of the other things that we have is we do have a mixture of selling glass as well as selling finished parts. We don't sell finished parts to that many people. We do to some, and that's an area where in the fourth quarter, we're seeing lower part demand, and that's really customer-specific.

Next, we'll go to the line of Mark Sue, RBC Capital Markets.

Jim, there's some notion that retail demand may be backwards or present-looking, while panel makers intentions are forward-looking. If the macro environment that we're in persists, can we get to a scenario where glass volumes can contract as they did in 2008, or is that magnitude highly unlikely? I'm just trying to think of the scenarios that you might be planning for internally. And then just on the price cuts, is this just a one-quarter phenomenon? How do we think about prices going forward? Does the rate of decline return in the first quarter, or do customers -- do they become trained on potentially more price cuts?

Well, I'll take the latter one first, on price cuts. You know, over the last 5 years, we've had several periods where price declines were stronger in a given quarter, and then they return to be at a lower level. That's obviously our hope. I can't guarantee that, but I can demonstrate to you that there have been -- this is the fourth time, but there have been 3 times before that over the last 5 years where there was a period of time when panel utilization was down, there was obviously excess glass demand that led to bigger price declines. We obviously don't want to give up our market position, and then after that, the price declines went to the more moderate level. I can't guarantee that, but that's really what has happened in the past. Relative to the economy, I'm actually not an economist, but clearly, what the high percentage growth you've seen in television so far this year, as you can see, we're not expecting that to be, when you get to the holiday season, it will have the same percentages. But we do expect them to be up. We have historically seen, by and large, consumers continue to spend money in consumer electronics in tough times. In fact, last year in U.S., an example, in television, demand was weak. We're not sure that it was really the economy so much as the industry got it wrong and trying to force a lot of high-priced product on them. So we've seen historically that consumer electronics has been a good demand even in tough times, and so we're not counting on that. We do think television manufacturers will continue to fine-tune their offerings, perhaps to be more on the lower end, but as a reminder from us, from a glass point of view, we're happy to sell the same amount of glass in a low-end 40-inch television as a high-end 40-inch television. In terms of smartphones and tablets, we think they're likely to remain a viable purchase. In tough times, people back away from cars. They back away from homes. They back away from going out to dinner. They do go to movies. So we're not sure. But maybe the panel makers are right. Maybe they're seeing something that we're not, but I think that we -- we think most of the reduction has been around inventory, and when you don't make much money, you don't want to take much inventory risk.

That's helpful. And then maybe just on Gorilla Glass, as we look at that opportunity, have you had some time to kind of recalibrate the magnitude of that? Is it still kind of an $800 million opportunity? Does it nudge higher, considering the resilience of some of the products? What are your thoughts on just kind of coverage glass for Gorilla applications on TVs? Is that starting to percolate as well? How should we kind of think about that over the longer term?

Well, obviously, there's a point of recovery on television's experience this year. First of all, Sony did not put them on as many models as we expected. And second of all, we haven't got any other manufacturer to move ahead on this. That being said, Corning is kind of a stubborn or impatient company. We actually believe frameless designs will become more successful, and we hope that Gorilla will be part of that. We think as television manufacturers figure out a way to make the picture go closer to the edge of the screen, that they in fact will be likely to adapt more of a frameless design. And we think there's technologies that could enable that to happen. So it's been a disappointment. Investors probably shouldn't count on a lot of help from TV cover for Gorilla this year or next, but we're long-term players, and we think it definitely could be an opportunity going forward.

And we'll go to the line of Rod Hall from JPMorgan. Rod B. Hall - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Jim, I guess my main question is regarding the inventory strength out there in the channel, and it doesn't feel like we know exactly what the bottom is. You would think that the manufacturers might be looking to suppliers like you to help buffer some of that, I don't know, the lack of inventory out there to make sure supplies continue to run. I'm just wondering whether you would anticipate having to carry more inventory yourself in order to somehow buffer out that lower inventory on the channel. Is there any other effects on your business that way that we ought to be thinking about?

We haven't experienced that yet. We definitely have rebuilt our inventories to be, what we call, normal level. We obviously now have excess glass capacity, and, I mean, we try to limit our own glass capacity closer to end demand. But obviously, we're going to retain some flexibility, so should our customers crank up suddenly, we can try to respond to them. But we, right now, are not planning on carrying excess inventory. Rod B. Hall - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Okay. So they're not pushing you to build buffers or anything like that?

That's correct. Rod B. Hall - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Okay. And then I just wanted to follow up, you mentioned the manufacturing assets for Specialty Material that you shut down. Could you give us more color on that? I'm not sure if you said anything in the comments. I didn't catch anything.

Well, obviously, Gorilla's not going to hit our original estimate, so we are throttling back manufacturing Gorilla because we're obviously not above $800 million this year. So we had capacity to do that, but we don't have the demand. Obviously, the biggest miss is TV cover, so we are throttling back some of that manufacturing, and that's going to be a drag in Q4. Rod B. Hall - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: And is that like one tank worth or more? Can you give us any idea of what the order magnitude of the reduction in capacity is?

No, I'm sorry. I won't do that for competitive reasons.

Next, we'll go to the line of Wamsi Mohan from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Jim, can you help reconcile the commentary around the expectation of glass inventory exiting this year below 14 weeks or well below 2009 levels yet increased pricing pressure, given excess glass supply? So I guess my question is -- is there a certain number of weeks of inventory that we can look to expect the price pressure to revert back to normal declines?

I wouldn't relate the pricing pressure at all to the weeks in inventory in supply chain. I just want to remind you what the weeks we're talking about. We're talking about the combination of panel inventory, set assembly inventories and retail inventories as we measure in that total in square foot equivalents against retail demand. So we don't think that really has much impact on pricing. Where it has an impact on pricing is not the absolute level, it's when panel makers are trying to reduce inventory. They're obviously selling more than what they're buying from us. Therefore, that's a period of time when they try to appeal for higher price cuts. And clearly, the glass industry in total have built capacity around the growth this year, as I indicated in my remarks, to get up to potentially service 3.7 billion square feet. Clearly, there's enough glass capacity to do that. So it's when you have a combination of more glass capacity than demand, and that is accentuated when the panel makers are cutting inventory that you get more price pressure.

So the net conclusion being 14 weeks of inventory, but there's a lot more at glass than at other parts of the supply chain?

We don't measure the supply chain other than -- when we say the supply chain, we're measuring what is glass embedded in panels out of panel maker, what is glass embedded in finished sets out of set assembly level and what is glass embedded in televisions at a retail level.

Okay. And as a follow-up, can you give a little more color on what changed in the end of September that caused the volumes of SCP to be down 20% versus the 35% that you expected when you reported last quarter? And did you institute any price cuts within the course of the third quarter? So if you might have mentioned that, I might have missed that.

We did not institute any pricing in Q3. Our pricing was as we had expected. It wasn't 35%. It was 30%, I believe, and we were above 20%. So I'll just say that in the end, from what we thought when we got Labor Day, what our customers finally took was a little bit more, but there was no special action on our part to make that happen.

We'll go to the line of Nikos Theodosopoulos from UBS.

I guess the first question, just getting back to the Gorilla outlook for the fourth quarter, the sequential decline, how confident are you that this is not a share loss situation? It just seems to me that it's still young in the business, and since you haven't sold a lot of TV cover glass, that you should be tracking pretty well the growth of smartphone and tablets, which I think people are expecting to be up sequentially in the fourth quarter.

Nikos, we're pretty confident it's not competition. We're very hard-pressed to actually find a competitive device that actually has any of our competitors' glass in it, except for one earlier this year, when we couldn't supply everybody. We're not feeling them in terms of when we go into competition with somebody and price pressure, so we're pretty confident against competition. What we have less visibility on is the amount of inventory. People thought how rapidly they're improving their yields, which were quite low initially, and that may be having an impact on us. So we think those things probably are having more impact on us than any competition is. And we're also struggling a little bit with mix from our customers. Some customers have not been as successful as others, and that's had some impact on us against our expectations. So clearly, those customers did build some inventory.

Got it, okay. And back on the pricing commentary, it seems like your competitors used price specific to Korea in the quarter to capture share, and you're responding. What's your sense of why that doesn't continue into the first quarter next year, given the weak demand outlook? What's the confidence that it doesn't persist beyond the fourth quarter?

Well, I won't comment on our competition and what they're doing. I'll just say, as I did in my earlier commentary, we've experienced periods in the past where we've had a combination of where glass demand has been weaker, whether that's from retail, but usually it's from panel makers wanting to cut the amount of inventory they have and glass capacity in the industry being greater than that, and that's often the opportunity where we see more price declines. We then reduce our price premium over our competition, and we've moved back to more normal price declines. As I said earlier, I can't guarantee that's going to happen, but clearly, that's what we want to happen, and that's what's happened in the past. We intend to price to maintain our position. We're not the price leaders, but we intend to price to maintain our position.

Okay. And just one last question, Jim. From time to time, you give updates on cost reduction that you've achieved in Display. Do you have a sense of what that will be this year for the company?

I think it's going to be quite good, but I'm not prepared to give out a number this year. I mean, we'll probably talk about it at our investor meeting in February.

Next, we'll go to the line of Jim Suva from Citi.

Can you maybe quantify a little bit by what you mean by pricing pressure to be a little bit more significant? I mean, there's ranges out there all the way. Are we talking down 5%, 10%, 15% quarter-over-quarter? It really does move the model quite a bit, and a little bit of commentary on that would be appreciated. And then the follow-up question, Jim, would be: With Chinese New Year now earlier this year and China surpassing North America for sales, thereby underscoring the importance of China, shouldn't kind of calendar Q4 demand for glass and pricing tend to be strongest in Q4? And what are we looking at for seasonality going forward given the importance of China compared to North America? It used to be the most important continent.

So I would say in Q4, we would think that the glass demand will be the highest, slightly higher than it was in Q2. And that hasn't always been the case in this industry. Clearly, China is very important. The holidays in China, as you know, are more difficult to gauge because even though some of them fall exactly on the same date every year, sometimes, they move around. But also, what's really happened in China is the promotions around holidays have expanded. So it's made it a little more difficult to say -- well, tell exactly during this period of time. But time definitely, China's becoming more important. It's one of the reasons why we're investing in China, particularly around our supply to BOE. They're starting to ramp the Gen 8.5. And China is an important part of our mix going forward, and we expect it to provide quite a bit of growth. Regarding pricing, I'm sorry. I have to disappoint you. I'm not going to quantify it. But I will just say in quarter 4, it will be up significantly over quarters 1, 2 and 3.

We'll go to the line of George Notter from Jefferies. George C. Notter - Jefferies & Company, Inc., Research Division: I just wanted to ask about some of the other kind of nontraditional competitors in the glass market. Are you seeing AvanStrate, are you seeing LG Chem, any signs that those guys are finally going to produce quality glass at some point in the future?

Well AvanStrate has always produced quality glass. They just have not been that large a player in terms of capacity nor that much of an upsetter to the industry in terms of significant price moves or asset additions. But basically, they have been -- they can make glass for all generations, including Gen 8. LG Chem, we haven't experienced at all. We know they've started melting glass in, I think, May or June, and we have not felt them at all. We know that they have made a few pieces that they provided to panel makers. We'd love to get a piece to test, but we don't believe they're making quantities of good glass at all. George C. Notter - Jefferies & Company, Inc., Research Division: Do you anticipate that those guys can come into the market at some point in the future and be successful competitors, or is that still a view that says the barriers to entry in the space are really significant? For example, I think in times past, you guys has been pretty downbeat about the idea that they could be a real competitor longer term. Is that still the case?

Well, we would say that the challenge is pretty great for them. They're using the float technology, which only one of our competitors uses. We're well down the cost curve, and they're just getting in for the first time. And the product requirements keep getting higher, for example, going to thin. The glass keeps getting thinner. And so it's not -- they made this decision to get into the business 3 years ago, so the product line has changed. And our customers' requirements continue to ramp up also. For example, the recent announcement of Lotus for OLEDs. Clearly, our customers want a higher temperature-capable glass, so we'd say the barriers remain very steep, and we'll see if they can mount them, but it's not our chief worry in life.

And next, we'll go to the line of Simona Jankowski from Goldman Sachs.

Jim, can you just also update us on your latest cell phones [indiscernible] specifically, especially now that you have come out with a product with that technology. Certainly, it seems like Samsung is getting more optimistic on the ramp there, and it's our understanding that OLED TVs will use one less piece of glass longer term. So how do you view the penetration of that technology and its potential negative impact on your opportunity?

We're delighted with our Lotus introduction. We have a glass that Samsung is qualified to use in their small generation OLEDs. They remain effectively the world's only volume producer of OLEDs. We are at work at providing a glass for OLED production in larger formats. We are looking to improve our glass for use in TFT oxide production capability. We have a customer who wants to use Eagle XG for that, and we're working to improve the thermal characteristics of that. So as always, we've heard it said before, we're fundamentally arms merchants, and we will make a glass that will meet our customers' needs. If, in fact, someone's going to go to only one piece of glass, we'll have to deal with that. We don't expect that to be the case. We have some information that some of our large OLED televisions that are being shown this week in Asia, again, they're still using 2 pieces of glass. And so I think this remains a hope for some people that they can go to one piece of glass. It's not clear to us that they'll get the performance nor the cost because the cost of glass continues to go down at a very rapid rate. So we're alert to it, but I think our Lotus development is exactly what we expect to continue to do, and so as people try to move to Gen 8 OLEDs, we'll have a product for them. And we think in the end, we'll be able to prove that glasses can be the second piece in the product, but we obviously got to make that happen, and that's what we're working on.

And just another follow-up on the pricing dynamics. In the past, when you've those couple of examples or instances when you had to take corrective action in pricing, it looks pretty short-lived. And this time, though, it seems like we've had negative profit margins for the panel makers for more than 3 quarters now, and it looks like it's going to last well into next year. And then if you add into that mix the OLED transition and then the move to thin glass. Wouldn't you kind of paint a picture that maybe structurally, we're entering a period of greater pace of glass type decline?

Well, I think that's speculation. I mean, we know what history was, and we know that we will be assertive about maintaining our market position, but I'm not going to speculate on the quarters going forward. I think our job is to deliver a product to our customers that helps them by being better, improving their processes. We will be price-competitive, but I can't -- I'm not going to make speculation about where the industry is going, going forward.

We'll go to the line of Ajit Pai from Stifel, Nicolaus. Ajit Pai - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: A couple of quick questions. The first is on your Telecom business. It was probably the strongest quarter in terms of revenue and profitability delivered, I think, in almost 10 years, I think since '01. So just looking at that, I know you've guided to normal seasonality for the December quarter, but can we expect those metrics over the next couple of years to continue to improve, or do you think that's some kind of peak? And also, yes, so first that, and then I'll ask the others.

Well, we think Telecom is in a very good position. Obviously, you know it remains it's a capital spending decision by our customers, so they always can change. But we think our innovation has really paid off, and we're quite confident about the Fiber-to-the-Home projects. Our technology in Enterprise has been a winner. And clearly, the world needs more fiber, and a lot of that is driven by -- data usage is up, wireless is up and the very strong demand for fiber. So I won't say that it will improve, but our own plans show good growth for Telecom over the next few years. Ajit Pai - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Okay. Is it safe to assume that the margins from this sort of operating margins of 20% plus can continue for that business?

Yes, I believe that our operating margin in this business will be strong. The products that are -- have seen the most demand are higher-margin mix. So I think our operating margins in Telecom will remain strong. Ajit Pai - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: And there aren't any capacity constraints for Corning right now in that business to continue to grow?

There definitely are capacity constraints, and we are spending some capital in Telecom for the first time in, basically, 10 years. Ajit Pai - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Got it. And then the second question is just looking at what's happening in the photovoltaic or the solar markets, and you've given us some commentary on Dow Corning or Hemlock seeing some weakness there. Have you re-prioritized your investments in glass for the overall photovoltaic opportunity on the TFT side?

No, we're completing the tank that we designed specifically for this. We still remain hopeful that we will have a customer committed to it. We think the overall developments in the solar industry actually put more reason why someone should turn to using thin film, using a glass that raises their efficiency. And we continue to believe our glass will do that. We've had some exciting new developments in terms of the progress we're making on making -- on proving our glass is good for our customers and their efficiency, and so we're continuing to move ahead with it. We might be wrong, but we're continuing to move ahead, and I think we still remain hopeful for next year. Ajit Pai - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Got it. And then the last question is just looking at the stepped-up dividend from Samsung Corning and uses of cash. The M&A environment, you talked about focusing a little bit more on M&A over the past couple of years. Could you give us some color as to whether that focus has changed? Are you still looking at potentially bolstering your other businesses outside of Display? I think you talked about Telecom and Life Sciences as potential areas. Has there been any change in that or greater interest in that?

I'd say there's greater interest in us using some of our excess cash flow to supplement our growth in Telecom and Life Sciences, and we're trying to do that. We obviously want to spend the money wisely, but we definitely have that as a higher priority.

This is Ken. I'm going to interject, but we're approaching 9:30. I want to be respectful of folks who are going to jump off when the market opens. So we're going to take one more call. I know there's quite a few people who are still in the queue, but if your question did not get answered, please call Ann and I after the call. But Robert, we'll take one last call.

And we'll go to the line of Ehud Gelblum from Morgan Stanley.

Jim, on the lower CapEx guidance, can we interpret that to mean that you're converting less tanks to Gorilla, so you have to replace them? Is that the reason for that?

It's in our glass industry that we are spending less capital.

Okay, appreciate that. On the Gorilla side, there's been a lot of talk here about strong end user demand for iPads and such for Gorilla in Q4, which is out of concert with what you're talking about for your Gorilla shipments. But is there any lead time involved? So for instance, did you ship a lot of Gorilla, perhaps, in Q3 that will go into that strong Q4? And perhaps, are we looking at maybe your Q4 Gorilla shipments are more to supply the end demand in Q1, or the lead time is only a couple of weeks, so we should assume that retail demand in a particular quarter is equal to your Gorilla demand?

We don't have a good metric on exactly how long the supply chain is yet for Gorilla, so it's hard for me to judge. I will say that we believe we shipped a little bit more in September as a result of the Chinese holiday and, therefore, the shutdown of production. So that may be part of it. But we just don't have a good model yet like we do in Display about exactly how much inventory yields with our customers and how much inventory they're carrying.

Appreciate that. On the glass side, I appreciate your not wanting to talk about your own pricing actions in Q4. Is there a sense that you can give us as to what your competitors did with pricing in Q3?

No, I think you'll have to ask them.

Okay. A question on the Telecom side. There have been comments from other companies further, further down the supply chain in the equipment vendor side. Claim is that there have been fiber shortages in various parts of the world in the Telecom side. Are you seeing demand for fiber outstripping yours and others' supply? Does that jive with what you're seeing that that could actually be expanding lead times on Telecom fiber?

So fiber has definitely been tight for most of this year, so that's definitely the case in terms of lead times expanding. We do not believe it goes to double ordering, though.

Okay. And finally, on the thin glass, we've seen some reports out of panel makers recently talking about there being a big move towards thin glass over the next couple of years much faster than I was expecting, so that possibly in 2013 or so, we could see a vast majority of TVs from certain manufacturers certainly moving over to thin glass. How quickly do you think -- are you seeing that, first of all? And how quickly do you think we're going to get to 50%, 60%, 70% of the glass shipments in the TVs being thin glass? Because from what I saw, it looked a little bit faster than I've been expecting. And when that happens, and your competitors actually will fully get there as well, how do you measure or balance the pluses of having better gross margins out of your tanks from producing thin glass versus there being additional supply of glass, therefore, in the market than there was today, maybe 40% or some more, and how that impacts pricing? How do you balance those 2 forces?

So what we'd say is that, first of all, we continue to see good acceptance of thin by our customers. As a reminder, our customers have to change their process a little to take thin glass, so it's not as easy as when we just make a composition change. But we're continuing to see that move ahead. It is in our plans and I think in most of the industry plans, that over the next 4 year period of time, the thin moves up well over half of the glass being taken. I think all the glassmaking industry has taken this into account in planning their incremental glass additions. We think the glass industry will be slowing its glass capacity additions quite a bit, and you should expect to see that reflect in our numbers, and that wouldn't surprise me if we saw it in the entire industry. So I think the industry is preparing for this. I don't think the pace is going to come as a surprise to many people.

Terrific. One last question, if I could. On the Hemlock side, the expansion that's either occurring now or shortly will be occurring in Tennessee. Would there be any change to those expansion plans given what seems to be going on in the market?

We expect to continue our Tennessee expansion whether how many phases of it. I think it's something that obviously has to be looked at, but clearly, right now, we have a need for the first part of it. Just a couple of closing remarks, if I could. First of all, we will be presenting at 3 conferences this quarter. November 15, we'll be at the UBS Technology Conference in New York. November 29, we'll be at the CS First Boston Technology Conference in Scottsdale. And on December 8, we'll be at the Barclays Technology Conference in San Francisco. And we really hope you can join us at one of these events. We also have a date now for our annual investor meeting in New York City. It will be held on Friday, February 3rd, starting at 8:00 a.m. and will end around noon. If you would like to see more details or register, go to our Investor Relations website. Just a couple of other comments. It's obviously a difficult economic environment, and we're dealing with a significant contraction in Display supply chain in the second half. But I'll remind people, we're on pace to reach $7.9 billion in sales this year, which would be the highest level in Corning's history. And even during these tough times, our Telecom business will top $2 billion, and our diesel business will actually exceed $500 million for the first time ever. Our newest product, Gorilla Glass, is expected to triple in sales, and it already has become our second highest gross margin product. And we think the sales growth this year gives us confidence that we're still on track to reach our goal of $10 billion by 2014. Lastly, we continue to feel very confident about our long-term business prospects and our ability to generate cash on a consistent basis. We recently took action consistent with this long-term outlook. We announced the $1.5 billion stock buyback program and a 50% increase on our quarterly dividend. Increased dividends moves our yield up to approximately 2.5% based on our current stock price. Regarding the share buyback, our decision was based on the opinion that the company's current stock price represented a significant discount to the real value of Corning's businesses. We understand the short-term concerns relative to recent macro events. But our board's recent action reflects our belief that long-term value of our businesses is substantially greater than our current share price. We expect to be active in the market, repurchasing our stock very soon. Ken?

Thank you, Jim, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. A playback of this call will be available beginning at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time until 5:00 Eastern Time on Wednesday, November 9. To listen, please dial 800-475-6701. The access code is 219706. Audiocast, also available on our website during that time. And Robert, that concludes our call this morning. Please disconnect all lines.

Thank you. One moment, please.