New York, February 17, 2026, 15:46 EST — Regular session
Corning Incorporated shares were down 1.3% at $131.71 in late afternoon trade on Tuesday, after ranging from $128.60 to $133.72. About 7.1 million shares had traded, with minutes left before the close.
The stock move comes as solar manufacturer T1 Energy said it has contracted to buy solar wafers from Corning, as it works to build a domestic supply chain it says can qualify for Section 45X manufacturing tax credits. “The Treasury guidance aligns with our mission,” T1 Chairman and CEO Dan Barcelo said in the statement; T1 shares were up 6.2%. 1
Why it matters: Corning has been pulled into two big spending themes — U.S. clean-energy manufacturing and Big Tech data centers — and investors have been quick to reprice the stock on any signal of new demand. It has been in focus since late January, when Meta Platforms agreed to pay Corning up to $6 billion for fiber-optic cables used in AI data centers. 2
The broader market was slightly higher, leaving Corning’s pullback harder to miss. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were both up around 0.1% in afternoon trading. 3
Other optical and networking names were mixed. Ciena shares slipped 0.6%, while Lumentum jumped 6.5%.
Corning last month forecast first-quarter core sales of $4.2 billion to $4.3 billion, a company-defined metric that strips out certain items, on what it called resilient demand for fiber-optic products — which generate nearly 40% of its revenue. Morningstar analyst William Kerwin said then the results were “probably baked in” after the Meta deal rally. 4
Corning also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.28 a share earlier this month, payable March 30 to holders of record on Feb. 27. 5
But supply-chain references in third-party announcements can be hard to size up without contract volumes or timing, and U.S. tax-credit eligibility may still shift with future guidance. Any pause in hyperscaler data-center spending would also test expectations for Corning’s optical segment.
Traders will be looking for a fresh read from management at upcoming investor conferences, including Susquehanna’s technology conference on Feb. 27 and Morgan Stanley’s technology, media and telecom conference on March 3. 6
