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 2025 annual meeting of shareholders. I'm Wendell Weeks, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer. With me here today are Melissa Gambol, Vice President and Secretary of the Corporation, and Lewis Steverson, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal and Administrative Officer, as well as Vice Chairman. As is our custom, we will conduct the business portion of the meeting first and answer any questions at the end. You may ask a question by submitting it in the Q&A section on the web portal. Please feel free to submit questions now. While we may not have time to answer every question, we will address any relevant unanswered questions on our Investor Relations website after the meeting. If we receive multiple questions on the same or a similar topic, we'll consolidate those questions and answer them together.
It is now shortly after 12:00 noon Eastern Daylight Time on May 1, and this meeting is officially called to order. Now I would like to introduce the members of the Board at today's meeting: Mr. Leslie Brun, Dr. Stephanie Burns, our Lead Independent Director, Ms. Pamela Craig, Mr. Robert Cummings, Mr. Roger W. Ferguson Jr., Mr. Thomas French, Ms. Deborah Henretta, Dr. Daniel Huttenlocher, Mr. Kevin Martin, Dr. Deborah Rieman, and Dr. Mark Wrighton. I would like to extend my gratitude to Ms. Henretta, Dr. Rieman, and Dr. Wrighton, who are retiring from Corning's Board following today's meeting after 11, 25, and 16 years of service, respectively. We are also joined today by representatives of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, our independent public accounting firm. Finally, the company has appointed Broadridge Financial Services to act as Inspector of Election. Ms.
Linda Piscadlo has taken the oath of Inspector of Election and will be tabulating the vote. After the formal meeting is adjourned, I'll make some brief remarks about your company, and then we'll 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, but they will be included in the official vote reflected in Corning's SEC filing. Now I'll ask Ms. Gambol to report on our quorum and other matters.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Board of Directors fixed March 3, 2025, as the record date for this meeting. Notice of the meeting was provided on March 21, 2025, to all shareholders of record as of the record date. The Inspector of Election has determined that a quorum is present, and a list of shareholders is available for inspection on the web portal.
Thank you. Now I'll 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 nine 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. Proposal three is the ratification of the Audit Committee's appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as Corning's independent registered public accounting firm for 2025. If any shareholder would like to make a comment regarding any of the proposals, please submit your comment through the web portal. 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 2025 annual meeting of shareholders closed. Ms. Gambol, do we have the preliminary voting results?
We do. The Inspector of Election has informed us that the preliminary vote report shows the nine 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 2025 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 2025 annual meeting of shareholders is now adjourned. That concludes the formal portion of Corning Incorporated's 2025 annual meeting of shareholders. Now I'd like to shift gears and talk to you about how your company is doing. 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. We had very strong performance in 2024, and we expect another strong year in 2025 as we continue to successfully execute our Springboard plan.
At the root of these results is our unwavering commitment to innovation. We provide durable, profitable growth and long-term value for our shareholders by inventing category-defining products, developing scalable manufacturing platforms, and building strong, trust-based relationships with customers who are leaders in their industries. All of our actions are grounded in a distinct set of values which guide our relationships with each of our stakeholder groups. In 2024, we introduced our high-confidence Springboard plan to add more than $3 billion in annualized sales by the end of 2026, driven by a convergence of cyclical and secular trends across our Market-A ccess Platforms. Since we already have the required production capacity and technical capabilities in place to support that growth, we will deliver very powerful incrementals. This translates into an improving return profile with profits growing faster than sales.
We set an operating margin target of 20% by the end of 2026, and we expect continued improvements in earnings per share, ROIC, and cash flow. Our 2024 performance marked a strong start to the plan, culminating in outstanding fourth-quarter results. Importantly, our momentum continues. In March of this year, we upgraded Springboard by $1 billion. Our high-confidence plan is now to add more than $4 billion in annualized sales run rate by the end of 2026. We continue to expect operating margin to improve to 20% by the end of 2026. Therefore, our upgraded sales will deliver higher EPS, stronger cash flow, and an improved ROIC profile than we originally anticipated at the beginning of Springboard. Earlier this week, we announced outstanding first-quarter financial results that exceeded guidance. We grew sales 13% year- over- year to $3.7 billion.
We grew EPS more than three times the rate of sales to $0.54. We expanded operating margin 250 basis points year- over- year to 18%. Looking ahead to the second quarter, we expect continued strong year-over-year sales growth with sales of approximately $3.85 billion and EPS in the range of $0.55-$0.59, again growing significantly faster than sales. Overall, we're coming off a strong year one of our Springboard plan, and our results and our guidance show we're off to a great start in year two. Now we'd like to open things up for shareholder questions and comments. Again, we will attempt to answer as many questions as time allows, and any relevant questions that we do not get to will be addressed on our company website. Lewis, have we received any shareholder questions?
Yes. We have one at the moment. How are you navigating the imposing and unpredictable tariff and foreign trade environment?
Excellent and topical question. Our longstanding philosophy is to locate our manufacturing operations close to our customers, and this serves as a natural hedge against tariffs and helps mitigate the financial impact. Now, we find that geographic proximity, more importantly, leads to better information and more delighted customers, and we apply this philosophy globally. As a result of this, the direct financial impact of the current tariff structure for us is relatively minimal, one to two cents per quarter. To illustrate this, let's just take a look at the impact of tariffs between the U.S. and China. In the U.S., we have a large advanced manufacturing footprint, and this includes our Optical Communications business, where we have the largest fiber factory in the world in North Carolina. We also manufacture products for our Automotive, Life Sciences, Mobile Consumer Electronics, and solar businesses in the U.S.
Almost all the products we sell in the U.S. originate from our 34 advanced manufacturing facilities located in the U.S. In fact, nearly 90% of our U.S. revenue comes from products of U.S. origin, and the majority, the remainder, is generated from products that are fully compliant with USMCA rules. Only 1% of the products we sell in the U.S. come from China. With that example, you can see why the impact of tariff structures is relatively minimal from us as we see them currently constructed. Once again, our values and our approach to serving our customers gives us added benefit over the long term to deal with some of the inevitable uncertainties that face us as we move forward.
Great. There are no further questions.
If not, that will conclude the Q&A portion of the meeting. Thank you again for joining us today.
The meeting has now concluded. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.
The host has ended this call. Good.