NEW YORK, Feb 22, 2026, 15:08 (EST) — Market closed.
- Corning shares closed Friday up 7.3% at $139.51 after touching $140.27.
- UBS lifted its price target to $160 from $125 and kept a buy rating.
- Focus shifts to management’s Feb. 27 and March 3 conference appearances for fresh demand signals.
Corning Incorporated shares closed Friday up 7.3% at $139.51 after UBS lifted its price target to $160 from $125 and kept a buy rating. The stock ranged from $129.79 to $140.27 in the session, leaving it in focus heading into Monday’s reopen. (Yahoo Finance)
The move matters because Corning has become a proxy for the physical buildout behind artificial intelligence — the cables and connections inside data centers, not the software. Shares rose above $140 for the first time on Friday and were up nearly 60% year to date, helped by expectations that big tech firms will spend more than $600 billion on infrastructure this year. (Investopedia)
UBS analyst Joshua Spector tied the shift to a new round of spending plans by the biggest cloud and social media firms. “This is driven by recent 30-50% revisions in capex spending by major hyperscalers,” he wrote; capex is short for capital expenditure, the money companies put into long-life assets such as servers and data centers. (Seeking Alpha)
Price targets are broker estimates of where a stock could trade over the next 12 months, not promises. A “buy” rating is a call that the broker expects the shares to outperform, usually relative to peers or the broader market.
Corning’s jump did not sit alone in Friday’s tape. Barron’s flagged gains for optical-networking firm Ciena and data-center contractor Comfort Systems USA on the same day, a sign the market is still leaning toward AI infrastructure names. (Barron’s)
Corning has also leaned into that narrative with big-customer deals. In a January announcement of a multiyear agreement with Meta worth up to $6 billion, CEO Wendell P. Weeks called it “a long-term partnership” tied to building “next-generation data centers” in the United States. (Corning Investor Relations)
The broader market backdrop was supportive on Friday, with Wall Street ending higher after a Supreme Court ruling on tariffs helped push investors back toward risk, while megacap tech stocks led gains. (Reuters)
But the trade cuts both ways. Corning’s run has made it more sensitive to any hint that data-center buildouts slow, budgets get trimmed, or new supply comes on faster than demand — the kind of swing that can punish “infrastructure” stocks when the market changes its mind.
Monday’s session will test whether the break above $140 holds, or whether Friday turns into a one-day squeeze. Traders will also watch for fresh analyst calls and any sign that customer orders are turning into sustained pricing power.
The next hard dates are on Corning’s calendar: Susquehanna’s Fifteenth Annual Technology Conference on Feb. 27 (virtual) and the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on March 3, when the company plans a webcast. (Corning Investor Relations)
