Thank you for joining Corning's annual meeting of shareholders. Please welcome Corning's Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Wendell Weeks.
Good morning and welcome to Corning Incorporated's 2022 annual meeting of shareholders. I'm Wendell Weeks, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer. With me here today are Linda Jolly, Vice President and Secretary of the Corporation, and Lewis Steverson, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal and Administrative Officer. Thank you for joining us today. As is our custom, we will conduct the business portion of the meeting first and answer questions at the end. You may ask a question by submitting it in the Q&A section on your web portal. Please feel free to submit questions now. While we may not have the time to answer every question, we'll address any unanswered questions on our investor relations website after the meeting.
In keeping with the digital approach to this year's meeting, it is now shortly after 12 noon Eastern Daylight Time on April 28, and this meeting is officially called to order. Now, I would like to introduce the other members of the board at today's meeting. Mr. Donald Blair, retired Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Nike. Mr. Leslie Brun, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sarr Group. Dr. Stephanie Burns, retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dow Corning Corporation. Our lead director, Mr. Richard Clark, retired Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President of Merck. Ms. Pamela Craig, retired Chief Financial Officer, Accenture. Mr. Robert Cummings, retired Vice Chairman of Investment Banking at JPMorgan . Mr. Roger W. Ferguson Jr., retired President and Chief Executive Officer of TIAA. Ms. Deborah Henretta, retired Group President of Global e-Business at Procter & Gamble Company. Dr.
Daniel Huttenlocher, Dean of MIT's Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. Mr. Kurt Landgraf, retired President of Washington College. Mr. Kevin Martin, Vice President, US Public Policy at Meta Platforms. Dr. Deborah Rieman, retired Executive Chairman of Metamarkets Group. Mr. Hansel Tookes, retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Raytheon Aircraft. Dr. Mark Wrighton, Interim President at George Washington University. We're also joined today by representatives of PricewaterhouseCoopers, our independent public accounting firm. The company has appointed Broadridge Financial Solutions to act as Inspector of Election. Ms. Linda Pascavage has taken the oath of Inspector of Election and will be tabulating the vote for today's meeting. Now, after the formal meeting is adjourned, I'll make some brief remarks about your company, and then we will have time for a few questions.
Just a note, any votes cast during today's meeting will not be included in this morning's preliminary vote totals, but they will be included in the official vote reflected in Corning's SEC filings. Now I'll ask Ms. Jolly to report on our quorum and other matters.
Mr. Chairman, the board of directors fixed February 28, 2022, as the record date for this meeting. The shareholder list shows that as of the record date, there were 845,646,081 shares of common stock outstanding and entitled to vote at this meeting. A list of shareholders is available for inspection on the web portal. The Inspector of Election has determined that 725,717,185 shares outstanding and entitled to vote are represented in person or by proxy at this meeting. This is 86% of the shares entitled to vote and represents a quorum for purposes of this meeting. This meeting is being held pursuant to a notice of meeting and proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 18, 2022
Now I will present the matters to be voted upon. Please note that we will give shareholders an opportunity to comment on the proposals after all proposals have been presented. The proposals will be presented in the order outlined in the proxy statement. Proposal one is the election of 15 director nominees to a one-year term. Proposal two is the advisory vote to approve the compensation of our executive officers as described in the proxy statement. It's a non-binding vote, although the Compensation Committee and the board will certainly take the results of the vote into account when making future compensation decisions. Proposal three is the ratification of the Audit Committee's appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as Corning's independent registered public accounting firm for 2022. Now, if any shareholder would like to make a comment regarding any of the proposals, please submit your comment through the web portal.
We have no comments at this time.
The polls are now open. Any shareholder who has not voted or wishes to change their vote may do so by clicking on the voting button on the web portal and following the instructions there. Shareholders who have already voted do not need to take any further action. Now that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I declare the polls for Corning Incorporated's 2022 annual meeting of shareholders closed. Ms. Jolly, do we have the preliminary voting results?
We do. We've been informed by the Inspector of Elections that the preliminary vote report shows the 15 director nominees have been duly elected. The compensation of the named executive officers has been approved by advisory vote, and the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2022 has been ratified. We will report the final vote results on a Form 8-K to be filed with the SEC in the next few days. Thank you.
There being no further business to come before the meeting, Corning Incorporated's 2022 annual meeting of shareholders is now adjourned. Now, that concludes the formal portion of Corning Incorporated's annual meeting of shareholders. Now, I'd like to take the opportunity to talk to you about how your company is doing. Now, today's remarks will include some forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially. You can find detailed risk factors in our most recent 10-K and also on Corning's website. You should also be aware that we use certain non-GAAP financial measures and performance indicators to assess Corning's financial and operating performance. You can find a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures on our website. Now, it is my pleasure to report that your company is strong and growing. No question, the macroeconomic environment right now is tough, but Corning is tougher.
In 2021, we generated more than $14 billion in core net sales, representing a 23% increase from 2020, and a 21% increase from our 2019 pre-pandemic results. Our execution resulted in year-over-year sales growth in all five of our segments, and we saw double-digit percentage increases in four out of the five. We delivered $2.07 in core earnings per share. That's an increase of 49% compared with 2020, and an 18% increase compared with 2019. We nearly doubled free cash flow year over year to $1.8 billion. 2021 was also a great year in terms of investment returns.
We achieved a double-digit ROIC percentage, and we repurchased 5% of outstanding shares while Increasing the quarterly dividend on our common stock from $0.22 per share to $0.24 per share before raising it again to $0.27 this February. We've increased our dividend 125% since 2015 when we announced an enhanced focus on shareholder returns. Overall, a very strong year for Corning in a very challenging environment. Now all of that said, our gross margin is simply not where it should be. Throughout the pandemic, we have prioritized protecting our people and delivering for customers in this complex inflationary environment, and it has come at a cost. Therefore, we negotiated with customers to increase prices in our long-term contracts to more appropriately share the increased costs we are experiencing.
Now, we are focused on expanding our gross margin and expect improvement this year as our sales grow and our price actions continue to take hold. Overall, we are well-positioned to maintain our momentum. The company is financially healthy, and we are confident in our ability to continue delivering sustainable growth and creating value for our shareholders. On Tuesday, we announced our first quarter results. We're off to an outstanding start in 2022 with strong sales and improved profitability. Sales grew 15% over the first quarter of 2021 to $3.7 billion. EPS increased 20% year-over-year to $0.54. Free cash flow was $171 million. We saw broad-based strength across our businesses, led by Optical Communications and continued favorable pricing in display. We effectively navigated a complex geopolitical and external operating environment.
Gross margin of 36.6% and operating margin of 17.6% both expanded sequentially and year-over-year. The improvements were primarily driven by benefits of pricing actions across all our businesses. Based on the quarter and our expectation of continued strong demand, we are raising our sales expectations for the year to above $15 billion. By leveraging our fundamental capabilities and our More Corning approach, we're capturing a compelling set of short and long-term opportunities across our portfolio, and we will continue to use our financial strength to invest in growth and extend our leadership. Let's just take a moment to unpack how we do that. We create ongoing value by innovating in our core technologies, developing scalable manufacturing platforms, and building strong trust-based relationships with some of the most innovative and successful companies in the world.
This leads to products that are vital to progress and builds business platforms that last for decades. We know from more than 170 years of experience that technologies reach limits, that new trends emerge, and that we must anticipate and evolve to address significant trends to remain relevant. I'll share a brief example in just one of our markets. Going all the way back to World War I, we have made important contributions to radio and radar technology. That work would position us for 80 years of leadership in television. Our cathode ray bulbs helped RCA introduce television to a mainstream audience at the 1939 New York World's Fair. By the time families were gathering around televisions in the late 1940s, Corning was at the center of the fast-growing industry of television glass manufacturing.
When TV makers were considering cheaper metal funnels instead of glass to bring production in-house, we stepped in with our centrifugal casting innovation. Spinning method led to a thinner, higher quality glass, and we set the standard for CRT glass production for decades. As time went on, our scientists stayed ahead of the curve and helped bring about the transition to color TV, helping Corning become the undisputed leader in television glass. We've been innovating ever since. Our fusion draw process makes possible the large high-resolution LCD displays that have become ubiquitous in modern life. Looking forward, we're continuing to innovate to make displays even brighter, sharp, and more lifelike as they become more and more a part of our daily lives, from our TVs to our smartphones, to our cars and beyond. Our ongoing success across all our markets stems from our cohesive portfolio.
Our long-term strategy is built on a complementary set of technical capabilities in glass science, ceramic science, and optical physics, combined with four proprietary manufacturing and engineering platforms. We are leaders in each. Capturing synergies among them allows us to create breakthrough products and processes for our customers, improve the return on our innovation investment, and reduce our capital intensity. As we partner closely with our customers to realize their visions and help solve their toughest technology challenges, we unlock new ways to integrate more of our content into their ecosystems. This More Corning approach provides a powerful value creation lever. We aren't simply relying on people buying more stuff. We're driving more Corning content into the products they're already buying. Let me walk you through some of the 2021 highlights across our five market access platforms.
Beginning with Optical Communications, we returned to growth with sales up 22% in 2021, and we expect that growth to continue. Operators are expanding network capacity, capability, and access. The pace of data center construction is accelerating as more applications move to the cloud and data creation continues to soar, and fiber-rich wireless deployments are underway. Throughout 2021, we continued to build on our extensive track record of providing flexible, scalable network solutions that allow customers to speed installations, expand capabilities, and reduce costs. We work closely with industry players at the regional and national levels, including expanding our long-term collaboration with AT&T. Moving to Life Sciences, we delivered growth on multiple fronts with sales up 24% in 2021. We saw ongoing demand in support of the global pandemic response.
Our inventions continued to help the industry advance the transition to cell and gene-based therapies. We made progress on our multi-billion dollar content opportunity in our pharmaceutical packaging business. Our new Velocity Vials are helping industry-leading drug makers increase efficiency and throughput. Velocity Vials join our Valor Glass and pharmaceutical glass tubing as we build our comprehensive packaging portfolio. To date, we've enabled the delivery of approximately 5.5 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines. In automotive, 2021 sales in our Environmental Technologies segment increased 16% to reach an all-time high, $1.6 billion. Now, we did this despite weakness in the automotive market related to semiconductor chip shortages. We made advancements towards capturing a $100 per car content opportunity driven by trends that are reshaping the auto industry. Tighter emissions regulations continue to drive strong demand for our environmental solutions.
Additionally, the design of cars is changing. We're seeing fewer buttons and more screens. That means more glass on both the interiors and exteriors, and we're addressing these trends in our Automotive Glass Solutions business. The Jeep Performance Parts windshield featuring Gorilla Glass is now a factory install option on the Wrangler and Gladiator. The dashboard display in the Mercedes-Benz EQS features a 5-foot-wide Gorilla Glass cover. We're enabling the augmented reality head-up display in Hyundai's IONIQ 5. Next, in Mobile Consumer Electronics, 2021 sales increased 7%, and we surpassed $2 billion in annual sales for the first time. We expanded our capabilities into a new product category, helping optimize mobile phone cameras. This creates an attractive opportunity to increase our revenue per device. Additionally, we continued to see strong demand for our premium smartphone cover solutions and for our advanced optics products used in semiconductor manufacturing.
Finally, in display, we maintained our strong position based on our leadership in large glass substrates. 2021 sales grew 17% to $3.7 billion. Our volume exceeds glass market growth as we ramped Gen 10.5 facilities that supply glass for large-sized TVs, which are expected to grow at a high teens compound annual growth rate over the next several years. Across our markets, our long-term growth drivers are strong, and our role is clear. We lead in capabilities that are vital to progress. Our approach provides exciting opportunities for Corning inventions to make a positive impact. It also underscores our commitment to moving the world forward in everything that we do. Along these lines, let me give you some examples outside of the operational context.
In 2021, we hosted COVID-19 vaccination clinics at Corning sites around the world, and we provided more than 200,000 diagnostic tests for our global workforce. We kicked off a five-year, $5.5 million partnership with the nation's largest historically Black university, North Carolina A&T. Our work will prepare students for STEM careers. We achieved gender pay equity globally for all salaried employees. We set new greenhouse gas reduction goals aligned with the Paris Agreement's 1.5-degree scenario, and the plan to submit them to the Science Based Targets initiative. Stepping back, I believe it's easy to see why Corning is such a special company. I'm so proud of the inventiveness, ingenuity, and unwavering commitment of our talented and dedicated employees. They've allowed us to execute well in a complex operating environment, all while supporting each other to keep Corning strong.
On a more personal note, I'd especially like to thank our recently retired CFO, Tony Tripeny. The strong position we're in today reflects his many contributions over 36 years with the company. I'm excited to work with our new CFO, Ed Schlesinger. Ed has long played a key role in the growth and financial strength of our company. Tony and I have worked closely with him during that time, and I look forward to the important contributions Ed will make in his new position. Now, I want to close by underscoring something I said earlier. Corning is vital to progress. Over 170 years, we've provided ongoing value to society with life-changing and even life-saving innovations. Today, we're positioned at the center of major industry transformations touching many facets of daily life.
We're helping our customers move toward a world with nearly infinite and ubiquitous bandwidth, a world where you can do more right from your mobile device, protected by cover materials that can withstand even greater abuse. A world with large lifelike displays, one where cars are cleaner, autonomous, and connected. In a world in which medicines are individualized, effective, and safe. We're very proud of what we've accomplished so far, and we believe our greatest contributions are yet to come. Thank you so much for being on this journey with us. We're working hard every day to keep your trust and reward your confidence in us. Now, we would like to open things up for shareholder questions and comments. Please note, we will attempt to answer as many questions as time allows, and any questions that we do not get to will be addressed on our company website.
Lewis, have we received any shareholder questions?
Yes, Mr. Chairman, we have one question at the moment. How will the impact of the growing electric vehicle market on Corning's environmental business be managed? That question's coming in from Paul Ronson.
Well, thanks for the question, Paul. This is a strategic topic that we've been working on for over a decade. What we seek to do is bring our three core technology and our four manufacturing and engineering platforms to bear on making electric vehicles better. Today, actually, our largest revenue content per vehicle in terms of models is found on electric vehicles. It is largely because of the adoption of our precision glass to help make those vehicles, much more user-friendly, lighter, better thermal control, surrounded by displays that take shape and change as you drive. We think this is a big opportunity for us. Though it will impact our environmental business, we anticipate taken together, these businesses will continue to grow well into the future.
Thank you, Wendell. We have another question coming in from Linda Dushman O'Connell. Are you concerned about recession? How would it affect Corning?
A good question, Linda. Yes, we do believe that there are economic scenarios where recessionary forces could set in in the coming years. That being said, sort of the core of our strategy is to not count on people buying more stuff for Corning to grow. Instead, we're trying to bring more of our innovations into the products that people already buy. In that way, that sort of strong content story, as well as the significant secular trends that we are riding in telecommunications, in automotive, in pharmaceutical packaging, in mobile consumer electronics, should allow us to continue to perform well in good economies and bad. It will, of course, impact us, but what we seek to do is outperform our competitors around the world and to provide a good way for shareholders to continue to advance returns even in more troubling economic times.
We have one more portion of a question from Fred Swayze of the Carpenters Pension Fund. Unfortunately, Mr. Swayze, your question, your comment came through, but your question did not. We'll give you a call after to make sure we understand exactly what your question is, and then we'll post the answer to our website. At this time, Mr. Chairman, we have no further questions.
That concludes the Q&A portion of the meeting. Thank you again for joining us today. On behalf of Corning Incorporated, I wish you and yours good health and safety.