My name's Asiya Merchant. I cover the technology, hardware, and tech supply chain here at Citi. Welcome to day two of our global TMT conference. Very thrilled to have Ed Schlesinger. He's the CFO of Corning. We also have members of the investor relations team here in the audience. Of course, this session is for Citi clients only. I'm gonna be turning it over. I have a set of prepared questions that I'll be going through, and of course, from the audience, we'll be asking... If you have any questions, please do raise your hand. We'll bring the mic over to you. Let me turn it over to Ed.
Yeah, actually, I just wanna make a safe harbor statement before we start.
Yeah.
I will be making some forward-looking statements today. You should review our filings on our website to see potential reasons that actual results may differ materially from the perspectives that I offer. Great to be here today, and look forward to chatting with you all.
All right. Ed, I'm gonna, you know, I have a bunch of prepared questions. You know, let's start with that. You know, Corning's exposed to a variety of end markets here. Now we're sitting in calendar third quarter. Maybe as you think about how the market has evolved versus your expectations, let's say, you know, a couple of quarters back, and as you think about it over the next six to nine months, what are you looking for?
Yeah, maybe I'll go back to the end of last year. We were in sort of what I would call a cyclical downturn, essentially in all of our markets. We called the bottom of that downturn in macro for Corning as Q1. We said that would be our lowest quarter, and the cyclical downturn was both, you know, end market driven in terms of consumer demand, as well as supply chain driven, inventory built up in various different parts of the supply chain. So as we went into the year, we expected Q1 to be the low, and then we expected, markets to inflect up, from that point. You know, we didn't necessarily, lay that out at the beginning of the year, but, you know, I would say there are markets that have recovered faster, than we might have thought.
Optical communications is a good example. We saw a significant amount of growth in the second quarter, primarily driven by GenAI, and that actually was, you know, ahead of what we would've expected, as we started the year, and I think that'll continue over the next, you know, six to nine months, twelve months. We have pretty good visibility there. In display, we expected panel maker utilization to inflect up. We were definitely at a very low point in the fourth quarter and first quarter, and that happened as well in the second quarter. Pretty strong second quarter, and that continues into the third quarter as well, and we've embedded all that in our third quarter guidance. I would say in our other markets, you know, it's mixed.
For example, heavy-duty diesel in our automotive market, we're actually now seeing a downturn in that part of the market. The good news is we're growing despite that, and we've, again, reflected that in our guidance. That maybe came a little more of an impact earlier than we might have expected as we started the year, and the good news is, again, that'll be a cycle, and we'll get through that, and that'll kinda drive growth in the, you know, later into, in, you know, the next several years.
Great. Back in June, you introduced the Springboard plan. You know, $3 billion incremental high confidence plan. You also have $5 billion that you've kind of laid out that would not be risk adjusted. So what was the driver behind introducing this plan? And there's a fairly big delta between the two. So the question I get from investors is: What's kind of baked into that delta? If you can help explain that.
Yeah, so, you know, back in October, back at the third, our third quarter earnings call, we started to talk about reaching the bottom and having an opportunity to add $3 billion of sales. The way we explained it was Q4 would be sort of the base. That quarter was $3.25 billion, so you annualize that, roughly $13 billion. We'd have an opportunity to add $3 billion-plus in sales over the next three years, and we started sharing that with investors, I think partly because we were convicted. We felt really good about the opportunities we saw, but also we hadn't provided long-term guidance in quite a while, sort of through the pandemic and that post-pandemic period.
And then we've been building out this framework over time, and in June, as you mentioned, we shared a view that went out five years, an $8 billion opportunity, again, off of that base year run rate over a five-year period of time. If you, you know, kind of, play that in a little bit to three years, a $5 billion opportunity with this $3 billion high-confidence plan. The way to think about the $5 or the $8 is that's our bottoms-up plan. So we roll that up, we look at all the opportunities we have, we look at what we expect to happen in our markets, our innovation adoption, our ability to supply our customers, where we think we'll win, and so on, and that sort of frames out the $5 and the $8. And where we have high confidence is around that $3.
We run a number of probabilistic models, and, you know, we sort of think about how investors should think about it. We think a three-year timeframe is a reasonable investment cycle, and we wanna give you a high confidence view on how we think about things. Now, a lot of things could happen that get us above that $3 billion, and if I think about where we are in Q2, cumulatively, we're tracking at about $1.3 billion higher run rate from our base year. So we're actually well above, you know, sort of where we might have expected to be on that trajectory towards $3 billion.
A lot of things, you know, a lot of milestones, a lot of things have to happen to get to that five billion, but our intention is to use this framework to sort of explain how we think about ourselves to investors as we go forward.
In that Springboard plan, I believe you also have new Market Access Platforms. Just if you could double-click on what those are, and, you know, does that mean there is more capacity that needs to be, if you were to go towards the newer Market Access Platforms?
... Yeah, so today we serve five market access platforms: display, optical communications, mobile consumer electronics, environmental, which is automotive, and life sciences, and we're building out a new market access platform in the solar space. We're also we have an auto glass business that today is not part of our environmental business. We'll move that business into that market access platform, and we have a pharmaceutical packaging business, and we'll move that into our life sciences market access platform. We'll kind of reconfigure all that as we go into twenty twenty-five. So we'll share more about the solar opportunity over the next few quarters. We've got a bunch of work underway, and you know, we'll share more about that with investors as we go forward.
From a capacity perspective, you know, as part of this Springboard plan, what we've said is that we have the capacity and technical capabilities, and you can think of that as cost, like, engineering, OpEx, and so on, to support the three billion plus in sales and, you know, in my view, probably the five billion in sales. So our capacity or our CapEx expectations, which this year are to be around the level of our depreciation, I think includes the spending that we'll need even for that new MAP, certainly in this, you know, window of this three-year window of time.
Okay. But you did talk a little bit about OpEx as well, 'cause that's a question that investors also have. So you're saying the OpEx is also right sized, too?
Yeah, I would say our current OpEx run rate, as I think about Q2, Q3, is a pretty good level to think about. Our goal would be to expand our margins significantly as we continue to grow. We've been doing that. We're significantly above the trough from a gross margin perspective. We've improved our margins about four points, despite still having some inflation embedded in there, that we absorbed over the pandemic period, and actually wage inflation, you know, certainly embedded in both gross margin and in our OpEx. And we also want to leverage at the operating line in addition to leveraging gross margin. Second quarter is a good example. We expanded our gross margin from the first quarter by one point. We expanded our operating margin by two points.
Mm-hmm.
So our goal would be to, you know, grow sales at a faster rate, hold our OpEx at a relatively consistent level, and we should be able to expand our operating margin.
Great. You talked a little bit about the company already tracking ahead of your 2Q level, ahead of where you kind of think you want to be. How much visibility do you have that this momentum sustains itself? As you know, you talked a little bit about it, but just if you could clarify further, how much visibility do you have that, you know, you just kind of inch up from that $3 billion towards the $5 billion?
Yeah. I mean, for sure we'll continue to sort of provide a perspective on the three and the five as we go forward. I would say with respect to visibility, we feel really good about the next several quarters. We guided Q3. We go up, you know, from Q2 and Q3. It won't be a straight line, and it won't be all at the same slope every single quarter. I think, you know, in the different markets we serve, I think we have pretty good visibility. In Optical, we have pretty good visibility going out several quarters. You know, again, next six to 12 months, I think we feel pretty good about continuing to be able to grow and accrete up to that level. And if we feel confident enough that we're above the three, we'll share that perspective.
Mm-hmm. All right. Optical, given that, you know, I think about half that growth that you're talking about, the incremental, is coming from Optical. You've indicated there that within Optical, the enterprise portion of your business, which is roughly about a third, I think, of your Optical, is going to be about 25% CAGR. Can you help us understand, you know, is that driven by AI? Is that just some normalization that's happening in that business as well? Is that just new data centers? If you can help us understand on that one.
Yeah. So our enterprise business, if you think about 2023, is about $1.3 billion. So just to give you the sort of magnitude of the size of that business. So we split our Optical business between enterprise and carriers. The remainder of that, our Optical business, is in the carrier space. We expect that enterprise business to grow 25% for the next three years. We actually, you know, put that target out in June, so a 25% CAGR from 2023 to 2027. So that would imply we more than double that business over that time period, just to sort of size out the opportunity. Embedded in the enterprise space is the data center business, and we are seeing a significant amount of growth related to AI in the data center space.
That'll be the primary driver of that growth. I think there will be growth in other places. You know, the thing I would say is the Gen AI opportunity for us is a lot about data center operators building out a back-end network in addition to their front-end network, to support their, you know, gen AI opportunity, to build their large language model, to train those models. Those data centers, those back-end data centers, require connection to the front end. They also house a much more powerful processing opportunity, so GPUs. The GPUs need to be connected to each other, not just rack to rack, but to, you know, GPU to GPU, so a significant amount more fiber, a significant amount more cable and connectors.
We've invented new fibers, new cable, new connectors that allow that to happen in a smaller space with a lot more connectivity, and that's what's really providing the opportunity for us, and so we saw those new products start to ship in Q2. That was part of what drove our Q2 sales above the range that we had provided from a guidance perspective at the beginning of the quarter.
... Okay, and then maybe just, this opportunity specifically, what is Corning's competitive differentiation within this opportunity that you laid out regarding GenAI and the new connectors that you've talked about?
Yeah, so, so we are the only end-to-end, fiber cable connectivity company in the world. We have the largest, you know, sort of U.S., outside of China, based fiber manufacturing capability. We control the access to that fiber. That gives us, you know, an advantage to the competition. Additionally, we've invented new products, as I just mentioned, that put us ahead of where the competition is in this space and provide cost and efficiency benefits to customers as they build out their data centers. Space becomes an issue. We've shrunk the size of the cables and the connectors significantly, and they have a lot more fibers and connections in that smaller space. So I think that gives us a huge, advantage over our competition. It also creates a little bit of a moat around, you know, our business.
We have long-standing relationships with a lot of the large players in this space, but there are also a lot of new players in this space, and we're continuing to win business in that respect as well. I feel pretty good about our ability to, you know, do well in this space.
Do you have a sense of your market share in that space at this time?
Yeah, we don't disclose that information. But yes, I mean, you know, we're a dominant player in the space, but we don't disclose that information.
Maybe like your regular fiber, you-
Can you bring the mic, please? Yeah.
I'm sorry, can you repeat that?
Maybe just to frame it, like, in your regular fiber business, what do you have, like, 40% market share globally or something?
Yeah.
In the U.S.-
We don't disclose that information publicly.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right,
On this topic, can you talk a bit about the Lumen deal and how that's-
Yeah
... structured?
That was good. Next question. Yeah, can you talk... Actually, before you jump even to Lumen-
Yeah
... just talk about the carrier side of the business, because I think the Lumen's kind of-
Yeah
... in between. Does it, is it in between carrier and enterprise? You talked a little bit about it on your earnings call. So maybe for those who may not be familiar with what's going on with the Lumen, you could, you know-
Yeah
... outline that.
So the way to think about it is enterprise is inside the data center for us, and then, you know, typically we sell to carriers. Carriers have their plants, they have outside plant, and they do fiber to the home and, you know, other applications, you know, 5G, et cetera. The Lumen deal actually is data center interconnect, so it is for data centers, GenAI data centers in particular, but it's actually outside the data center. I see that as a, you know, a new market opportunity, perhaps for us, beyond even the Lumen deal, and I can talk a little bit about the Lumen deal. We had not included that. So in the $1.3 billion business I talked about and the CAGR I gave, the Lumen deal is not included in that.
We're not thinking about that right now as sort of being inside the data center or inside our enterprise business, but it is related to GenAI, and I understand that people really want to track that. So we will give that some thought and think about how we can, you know, provide more of a GenAI perspective on how that impacts our business in totality, you know, including things that might be data center interconnect, which would be outside the data center, and you know, I'm sure you've all read the Lumen deal. I won't talk so much about their deal, but they actually have a significant opportunity to connect large data centers for hyperscalers across the United States because the data centers will require so much processing power that they will, you know, connect them together to create these large networks.
We're gonna provide Lumen with the cabling to be able to do that. We've also invented a new cable that actually doubles to quadruples the opportunity for them to fit fibers in their existing conduit. So they have an existing network of conduit that connects long haul or city-to-city, opportunity, and we will allow them to sort of retrofit, if you will, their existing conduit with a much smaller cable that allows a lot more bandwidth in there. So that's what the opportunity is. They've reserved about 10% of our fiber capacity, so, you know, you can sort of think about that as, you know, roughly 10% of our sales, you know, in terms of the size of the opportunity. It's a multi-year, opportunity, so it's incremental to the way we were thinking about our enterprise business.
It's one of the reasons why we feel confident about the next several quarters.
Mm-hmm. So sorry, so the Lumen deal. I know it's not factored into your third quarter outlook as well, I guess because the revenue opportunity is unlikely to materialize in third quarter, and it's gonna start more in calendar 2025. Is that right?
Yeah. It's possible we ship a little in the fourth quarter, but I think you should think of it as 2025, 2026, 2027 versus 2024.
Right. And it's built into your high-confidence Springboard plan?
Yeah. So we get this question a lot, and maybe, the way I'm gonna answer it is: in the $5 billion opportunity, I think it's included in that.
Mm.
You know, when we think about how big optical could be, and it's a significant portion of that $5 billion, you should think of it in there. In the $3 billion, we're really not being that specific. We're sort of running a bunch of different scenarios, probable probabilities on how we think, you know, we have the ability to provide you with a high confidence view to make investment decisions. At some point in time, we may be running well ahead of that, and we will share that view. So when I think about the $3 billion, we're not really thinking about exactly how much of that comes from optical versus display versus life sciences, et cetera. We have a view of that in the $5 billion plan, but not so much in the $3 billion plan.
All right. Outside of Lumen, though, maybe if we can just talk about the rest of the carrier side of the business.
Yes.
What's going on there? Is there some sort of mean reversion to the kind of chart that you share in your earnings deck?
Yeah. So, you know, when I at the onset, I mentioned we were sort of in this cyclical downturn. Carriers were a part of that as we sort of exited twenty twenty-three, supply chain inventory driving a lot of that. They were buying less than they were deploying, you know, depleting inventory that they had built up. We've seen that start to dissipate. I would say we're, you know, mostly through that, but certainly not completely through that. So our sales have gone up in the carrier space as we progress through the year, probably at a slower pace than we might have thought at the beginning of the year, but we are seeing that inflect up, and we expect to continue to see that inflect up.
Additionally, BEAD, which will start to kick in in 2025, also probably happening a little slower than we would have thought maybe a couple of years ago when the plan was put in place, is beginning to gain momentum. We expect that to drive additional deployments as we go into 2025, which will drive carrier growth 2025, 2026, and beyond that time window. So carrier is definitely, you know, moving in the right direction, positive, but certainly not driving as much growth as we might have expected in this short-term window here. So I think the good news is that's an opportunity in the future to, you know, to fill out optical in that $5 billion space.
Mm-hmm. Do the U.S. elections have any impact on the BEAD, or the outcome of the U.S. elections have any impact to the BEAD funding?
I don't think so. Although, you know, the reason I would say no is because it benefits every state. You know, red states, blue states benefit. A lot of the states that are currently filing for funding in BEAD and winning those funds and actually starting to deploy are states that would be Republican states, so I don't think it has an impact.
All right. I'm gonna switch it to some of your other businesses. Display, I get a lot of questions on that. It's obviously, you know, a big, profitable side of your business. Like, the net income margins there are higher than your other businesses. You did talk in your last earnings call about pricing negotiations going on with those. Obviously, investors want to know what's going on there, and just your ability to pass through price increases, just given, you know, the TV demand outlook.
Yeah. So, just to rehash maybe where we are or what we, you know, shared back, you know, is, I think it was back in May, is we're in the process of implementing a currency-based price adjustment across our customer base. We hedge the yen. We have hedges in place for 2025 and beyond. Our hedges are not at our current core rate of 107, but they're much better than the spot rate. Spot rate has been coming down, but our hedges are better than the current spot rate. And our goal is to, in combination with our price adjustments and our hedges, maintain our level of profitability in the display business, and you can think of that as the average of the last several years, maybe last five years, net income % of sales in display. So that's our objective.
And when I think about the display business, we're the technology leader, we're the cost leader, we're the market leader. We expect to maintain our cost position, so that sort of takes care of price, that takes care of cost, so what's left is really volume. And, you know, I think about volume as being driven by screen size. We're not expecting unit growth necessarily in display. Units have been relatively flat over the last several years, but we are expecting the average screen size to go up. If it goes up an inch or so a year, that adds a few points of growth of glass into the market. So, you know, we expect display volume to grow over that, over this next several-year time period.
We expect to maintain our profitability, you know, through these price adjustments and to maintain our strong cost position.
Within that Springboard plan, Ed, you know, what's the contribution of display? I think I do see a little sliver of line that's attributed to display. So are you expecting off the base level that display revenues, not just profitability, grows?
Yeah, I think the way to think about display is, you know, you go back to that Q4 2023 base, right? And, you know, from a run rate perspective, I do think display could increase. You know, if volume increases over that time period, we could see, you know, revenue growth from that. But I think the most important thing is our ability to maintain our profitability, which then allows all the other growth that we get in this plan to live through. And so, you know, if we're successful, and we'll share an update on the pricing with investors when we, you know, are sort of through the process. If we're successful with all that, I think that actually underpins a lot of the growth that we'll see in other places.
Okay. And just near term, you know, there's a lot of, you know, just with third quarter, and even into 4Q, I think panel makers talking about bringing down some utilization to just kind of manage inventory levels. Just any updated thoughts on that?
... Yeah, I think if I start with the market, it's pretty flattish. I think units will be pretty flat. I do think there'll be a little bit of growth overall, and I'm thinking year over year, 2024 versus 2023. That'll be driven by, you know, average screen size going up to some extent. Panel maker utilization tends to be a little higher in the second and third quarter, maybe the fourth quarter. So it, you know, you can't really, I think, think about it quarter to quarter. You sort of have to think about it on an annualized basis, year over year. And I think, you know, what we're seeing so far this year and into the third quarter is about what we expected, and I think it's, you know, keeps the market in a pretty good place, relative to the expected demand.
All right. Just reaching out to the audience, any questions before we jump into some of the other segments? Questions? Okay. Auto, you talked a little bit about that. It's in your environmental side of the business, and plus, you have the auto glass, which is part of your Springboard, which is incremental. So just first talking about what's already in the Springboard, and then what's already in the baseline and then the incremental that you're talking about here.
Yeah. So in the auto space, we have our legacy environmental business, which is filters and substrates. That business will continue to perform well. We're seeing a small downturn in heavy duty, so that's impacted us here in the short term. The opportunity in that space is the U.S. has implemented new rules. The EPA has implemented new rules which require gas particulate filters on automobiles starting in 2027. We should start to see sales in 2026 as the 2027 model years get built out. So that should drive growth in that business towards the end of the three-year window, but then beyond that window. In auto glass, we have a triple-digit sized auto glass business.
I'll explain it, you know, a little bit in a second, and we expect that business to triple over this window of time, so from the, you know, beginning of 2024 through the end of 2026. So a nice amount of growth coming in that auto glass space. We serve the inside of the vehicle displays. Think of, you know, large form factor displays, and, you know, other glass inside the car. That's the interior glass is the primary revenue driver today and will be the primary growth driver over the next few years. We also do exterior glass for the outside of the vehicle, and then specialty glass for applications like LiDAR or other autonomous driving applications. Those opportunities, I think, will come as well, probably later in the time cycle and maybe beyond the, what, this three-year window of time.
Okay. And so I know in the past, Wendell talked about your current content, including GPFs, being around maybe 40%-45%, and then getting up to $100 of content per vehicle. That includes perhaps this auto glass, and does it include LiDAR and all these exterior opportunities as well?
Yeah, the $100 per car opportunity includes the environmental business, GPFs. It also includes the interior vehicles, the exterior vehicles, and LiDAR. So that we see that as the sort of addressable opportunity for us. We've been accreting up, you know, we have a very strong position in the environmental space, and we're building out a business in the auto glass space. And I think the nice thing about the auto glass space is it's not really driven by the market. It's driven by the adoption of technology, right? We don't need more vehicles. It doesn't necessarily matter whether they're BEV or they're ICE vehicles. It's just the technology adoption, displays, autonomous driving, connectivity that drive the need for our products into the vehicle. So I think that will be the big driver of how we go from where we are to that $100 opportunity.
And just given the greater content growth, you know, there is obviously chatter about autos still being weak. Just how you think about... I know you're talking about more of a three-year timeframe, you know, 2023 to 2026. Just given the dynamics that we're seeing right now in autos being perhaps a little bit weaker as an end market, is there any difference between which geos adopt the interior auto glass or any particular drivetrains that are more likely to adopt the interior auto glass?
I would say more autos is good. You know, just in general, more cars is good. But I think it's mostly about the changing the way the cars, you know, drive. Autonomy is the best example, I think. As cars become more autonomous, the need for, you know, products that help control the car, things of that nature are really what's gonna drive the technology adoption. Large interior displays, you see that more and more in vehicles, even, you know, certainly in high-end vehicles, but you're now starting to see that in vehicles sort of all the way, you know, through the value chain. I think that's really the driver. So, you know, the market being weak, I don't think has an impact on our ability to grow in that space.
Just your competitive positioning here, anything that you can share about, you know, how you guys are versus some of your other peers or competitors in this space? Is there a lot of competition in the auto glass space?
Yeah, there's certainly competition. We have a ColdForm Technology, which allows us to make these large form factors at a much lower cost. So that gives us a technological advantage on an interior display. So, you know, if there's form required, if there's size required, that actually is a competitive advantage for us.
Okay, maybe just switching to mobile consumer electronics, that's another one within the specialty semi. Maybe if you could talk about, you know, what's going on there. It's a business that's, you know, fairly cyclical. You have new form factors that come through, and you see a big step up in your specialty semi sales. It's a fairly profitable part of your business. So what's gonna be the next driver there?
... Yeah, maybe starting with the markets. We serve sort of two markets, you know, well, I mean, more than two, but primarily two. We have an Advanced Optics business, which is primarily directed at the semiconductor space, and we have a Gorilla business, which is directed at mobile consumer electronic devices like phones, smartphones, tablets, PCs, et cetera. You know, on the Gorilla side, the markets have been relatively muted units. You know, there's not much unit growth. We're not expecting much unit growth this year. We've grown that business significantly faster than the market over the last decade because we've added content, so dollars per phone has gone up significantly, as an example. We'll continue to do that.
We're not expecting any new significant innovation adoption in twenty twenty-four, but we do have some things that'll kick in a little bit later in our Springboard plan: new form factors, bendable glass. You know, think of foldable and that in that space. On the semiconductor side, we have actually been growing that business quite nicely. We primarily serve the semiconductor equipment manufacturers with specialty glass, and we expect that to continue to grow over time as that market continues to grow. So twenty twenty-four, you know, I would say we haven't seen a lot in our Springboard plan, but there's an opportunity in twenty five, twenty six, and beyond that for Mobile Consumer Electronics to contribute more than it is contributing today.
Okay. Uh-
I think there was one question.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Uh-
Can you just bring the mic here, please?
In the fiber business, especially in these innovative new fiber, whether it be the stuff for Lumen that's smaller and more... and also the back-end fiber inside the enterprise data centers, is it fair to assume that that's significantly better gross margin because of all the innovation you're bringing to the table?
Yeah. I think to the extent we can provide an end-to-end solution, the way to think about it is we make fiber, we sell fiber, we make cables, we sell cables, we make solutions or connectors. Those solutions are generally a higher margin opportunity for us than if we're selling sort of base fiber or base cable. So you should think about it that, you know, as we grow that business, our margin should improve.
Other question there.
Just with respect to the $5 billion target, and then the, I guess, like the $3 billion target in between, right? Can you give us a sense of how much of that is gonna come from BEAD, and how much of that is gonna come from Gen AI?
So far, GenAI has contributed a fair amount, and we expect it to continue to do that, you know, in the foreseeable future. BEAD will kick in in twenty twenty-five. I would be cautious to provide, you know, specificity because it's taken longer for BEAD to sort of deploy. I think there is a huge opportunity for us, hundreds of millions of dollars of incremental sales that come from BEAD. Exactly when that starts and kicks in is hard to call, so it may go beyond this three-year window of time, and it may come faster, you know, depending on how sort of the states and their particular carriers wind up doing the deployments.
For the inside the data center, fiber, do you sell that directly to, like, the cloud service providers, or do you sell it to, like, the equipment OEMs, or?
Yeah, our customers are the hyperscalers themselves. Yeah.
Is there a way to think about the relative size of the optical opportunity within the data center versus between data centers?
There probably is a good answer to that question, but I'm gonna. I'll tell you what, we will. I will think about that, and we'll come back to you on that one, if that's okay. Yeah. I think it. Yeah, I think it's probably a little early for us to size the data center interconnect opportunity, but we will. We'll come back and answer that question.
All right. Maybe we can talk about capital allocation. Ed, I know investors have been asking about capital allocation. It's been a while since you've had your investor day. How should we think about... You started to buy back shares, I think, in calendar 2Q. Just how do we think about the fact that you're kind of holding CapEx relatively flattish, you're gonna be generating free cash flow with sales growth? How should we think about capital allocation?
Yeah, so our capital allocation approach starts with investing for organic growth. We're an organic grower. That's how we see ourselves. We think that creates the most value for shareholders over the long term. The good news, as you mentioned, is we have capacity in place, so we don't need to make significant capital investments. We also have the technical capabilities, so the other cost in place, so we don't have to make significant investments there, which should mean as we grow, we generate more cash flow. I think that's good. Second, it's important for us to maintain a strong balance sheet. We like having an investment-grade balance sheet. We invest over long cycles of time, so we never wanna have a time period where we can't make investments. And again, I think the good news here is we have a strong balance sheet.
We are investment grade, so we don't have to do a lot of work on our balance sheet. So that leaves, you know, deploying capital to shareholders. We pay a very nice dividend. We'll continue to pay that dividend, and we started buying back shares in the second quarter. We've continued to do that in the third quarter, and our plan will be, as we're successful on Springboard, we'll continue to accelerate that. We have not articulated any, you know, specificity on exactly what we're gonna do, but certainly we intend to continue to buy back shares.
... On the Market Access Platform, the new Market Access Platform, you talked a little bit about the solar. You know, can you expand on that a little bit? I know you have Hemlock. How should we think about- are you planning to grow that business? What are some of the drivers for growth and profitability in that business?
Yeah, we plan to come back in the next few quarters and share a little bit more about that, this MAP. We have a few other milestones and things we want to get done, and, you know, we'll then kind of talk a little bit more about it. We think it's a nice opportunity for investors. It's a nice opportunity for us and investors. There's a lot of incentives in the IRA and in the CHIPS Act that we are using to help build out the business, so we'll share a little bit more about that over the next several quarters.
All right. And I know investors do still ask about yen. I know you talked a little bit about that. When should we expect an update on what the new yen rate is?
Yeah, so we're in the midst of doing our display price increase. We have hedges in place, as I mentioned. They're not at our current core rate, but they're certainly better than the spot rate. When we're done with the display price increase, we'll provide an update certainly before we get to, you know, twenty twenty-five, on how we think about both display price and yen.
Mm-hmm. Right, we have a couple more minutes. Any other questions from the audience? Ed, if you were to step back and kind of think about your market share positioning, you know, in each of your core markets, how should we think about that? I'm sorry, is there a question there? Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see your hand there.
That's all right.
Okay.
Can you just talk about whether or not the Supreme Court ruling on the Chevron doctrine, or whatever it's called, affects. You mentioned, for example, the EPA putting in the new regulations regarding the filters and the technology content in autos. Do you expect pushback from automotive manufacturers and other customers on those kinds of regulatory interventions that increase the technology content in cars and other applications of your products?
Yeah, I will. We'll come back to you on that one.
Just about your market share positioning across some of your end markets, you know, or technology offerings. You know, if you step back and think about it, display, I think you guys have said you feel comfortable you're not ceding share despite the price increases. Just I guess there were some questions on optical as well. If you just step back and think about, you know, how you're thinking about your market share positioning across some of your core technology offerings.
Yeah, I think the best way to think about us is that our goal is to be the market leader, the technology leader, and the lowest cost producer in the markets we serve. And that is generally the case across most of the markets where we compete, so we work hard to achieve all three of those things. I don't see anything today that is deteriorating us, you know, in any particular space. And we'll continue to obviously work hard to improve market positions, you know, as we continue to grow.
All right. Thank you. That about wraps it. Thanks a lot, Ed. Thanks, Sam.
Thank you.
Thanks, Carol.
Thank you.
All right, take care.