Welcome to the Corning Incorporated Quarter 2 2018 Earnings Call. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. It is my pleasure to turn the call over to Ann Nicholson, Division Vice President of Investor Relations.
Thank you, Amy, and good morning, and welcome to Corning's Q2 2018 earnings call. With me today are Wendell Weeks, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Tony Tripeny, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Jeff Evenson, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer. I'd like to remind you that today's remarks contain forward looking statements that fall within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. These factors are detailed in the company's financial reports.
You should also note that we will be discussing our consolidated results using core performance measures unless specifically indicate our comments relate to GAAP data. Our core performance measures are non GAAP measures used by management to analyze the business. A reconciliation of core results to the comparable GAAP value can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website at corning.com. You may also access core results on our website with downloadable financials in the interactive analyst center. Supporting slides are being shown live on our webcast.
We encourage you to follow along. They're also available on our website for downloading. And now I'll turn the call over to Wendell.
Thank you, Anne, and good morning, everyone. This morning, we reported strong second quarter results and raised our full year 2018 outlook. All businesses met or exceeded expectations for the quarter with year over year sales growth in each. Highlights include optical sales were up 16% year over year and we are increasing our expectations for full year organic sales growth. Environmental sales were up 21% year over year, and we have also increased our full year outlook.
Specialty Materials performed better than expected. We anticipate year over year sales growth in quarter 3 and for the full year, driven by strong shipments of innovative new products. And finally, progress towards stable returns in display continued with sales and net income in line with expectations. The pricing environment in display is the best it has been in more than a decade. We expect to reach the important milestone of annual price declines improving to a mid single digit percentage in quarter 3.
In total for the quarter, sales were $2,800,000,000 up 9% year over year. Net income was $359,000,000 and EPS was 0 point quarter in terms of financial performance and progress on our investments. As planned, we undertook a phase of intense operating and capital investments to help us meet committed demand and capture new opportunities. We have now reached an inflection point where those investments are yielding clear benefits, including increased sales and greater profitability. Several of our largest projects have exited the startup phase and production and efficiency rates are climbing.
So we are on track to meet increased demand, grow sales and significantly improve profitability in quarter 3 and beyond. Specifically, we expect to expand margins and reach approximately $300,000,000 in full year 2018 sales, up 10% year over year and an increase from our prior expectation of $11,000,000,000 So we feel great about both the back half of twenty eighteen and our long term opportunities, as Tony will describe in a little more detail in just a few moments. Now let's turn to Under the framework, we target generating $26,000,000,000 to 30,000,000,000 Under the framework, we target generating $26,000,000,000 to $30,000,000,000 in cash through 2019. We plan to return more than $12,500,000,000 to shareholders through repurchases and dividends and to invest $10,000,000,000 to extend our leadership and deliver growth. We have made great progress toward those goals since we announced the framework in October of 2015.
Our cash generation is on target and through the end of the second quarter, we have returned 10.8 $1,000,000,000 to shareholders. Dividends per share have increased 50% since the framework began. Investments in RD and E, capital expenditures and acquisitions also remain on track to our 4 year plan, totaling $6,700,000,000 through June 30. As outlined in our framework, Corning is the best in the world in 3 core technologies, 4 manufacturing and engineering platforms and 5 market access platforms. Our capabilities are interrelated and reinforcing.
We focus 80% of our resources on opportunities that use capabilities in at least 2 of these three categories. This increases our probability of success, reduces the cost of innovation, creates stronger competitive barriers and most importantly, it delights our customers. Now I'll turn to our progress in each of our market access platforms, starting with optical communications. We remain the world leader in passive optical solutions and the only true end to end supplier of integrated solutions. Our outstanding performance in optical communications continued in the second quarter and helped drive an increase in our full year outlook.
We now expect full year sales to be up by a high teens percentage year over year with organic growth increasing to the low teens versus our prior guidance of 10%, plus an additional $200,000,000 in sales from the acquisition of 3 ms Communications Markets division. Strong market demand and the continuing success of our co innovation model have resulted in faster than expected progress toward our goal of $5,000,000,000 in annual sales by 2020 with continued growth thereafter. We reached a major milestone in June when we completed the acquisition of 3 ms's Communication Markets division. This investment extends our market reach and access to global customers, while expanding our portfolio in the rapidly growing optical solutions markets. We continue to introduce award winning products.
Our Edge Mesh modules received the Data Center Cabling and Connectivity Product of the Year award in the Q2. This family of products has emerged as a critical enabler of data center networks. The award demonstrates strong support from our customers, distributors and peers. Stepping back, we've positioned our optical communications market access platform to deliver advantaged optical fiber, cable and connectivity solutions for access networks, cloud data centers and the network densification necessary for 5 gs and even autonomous vehicles. We're excited about our excellent performance, our current growth and our future opportunities.
Now let's turn to mobile consumer electronics, where we are the world leader in glass for smartphones, tablets and emerging categories like wearables and augmented reality devices. Our goal is to We continue to make significant progress in adding more sales dollars per device by innovating in both glass and value added components, while also expanding our share in developing regions and entering entirely new product categories. Gorilla Glass has been designed into more than 6,000,000,000 devices worldwide. Last week's launch of Corning Gorilla Glass 6, the world's most durable cover glass to date extends our market leadership. Now, recent indicates that consumers drop their device on average 7 times a year.
So it's no surprise that having their devices survive multiple drops is important to our customers. And the innovations contained in Gorilla Glass 6 provide a significant step forward. In lab tests, our new glass survived on average 15 drops from 1 meter onto rough surfaces. Now that's about twice as many drops as Gorilla Glass 5. Competitive glass compositions under similar conditions did not survive to double sales is to increase revenue per device and we fully expect Gorilla Glass 6 to make significant contributions toward that goal.
Customers have shown very strong interest and you should be hearing announcements from them in the near future. Increasing penetration of glass backs to enable wireless charging and higher data rates also supports our goal of doubling sales Mobile Consumer Electronics. The fundamental properties of Gorilla Glass make it an ideal choice for both the fronts and the backs of smartphones. In 2018, we expect 28% of smartphones sold to have glass backs, nearly double the amount sold with glass backs in 2017. We're also innovating in new device categories.
Gorilla Glass continues to be the most widely used cover material on smartwatches. And lastly, we launched Corning Gorilla Glass DX and DX Plus, which offer enhanced anti reflective optics and extreme scratch resistance for wearables. We're also sampling these new composite materials in the handheld space. Our broad product portfolio has enabled continued wins in developing regions and value segments. In the Q2, General Mobile announced the GM8 smartphone in Turkey and Positivo launched the Sky smartphone in Brazil, both featuring Gorilla Glass.
We also remain well positioned with innovative glass based solutions for emerging applications, including augmented reality and precision three d sensing. Overall, we expect sales in specialty materials to grow in 2018 as more devices adopt Gorilla Glass 6 and our other innovations. Turning to our automotive market access platform. Our expertise focuses on helping customers build cleaner, safer and more connected vehicles. Corning reached a significant production milestone of 1,000,000 gasoline particulate filters as we lead the market in the next wave of emissions control.
We're partnering with most automakers to equip their new European gasoline engine platforms with our technology. China will be the next market to introduce GPF and we're preparing by increasing the pace of investment in our new Hefei, China facility. Once regulations are fully implemented in Europe and China, we expect gasoline particulate filters to add $500,000,000 in annual sales for Corning. Next, excitement about Gorilla Glass for auto continues to grow as the industry transitions to highly connected and autonomous vehicles that use technical glass. Polls for collaboration from more than 20 leading OEMs is increasing and customer commitments now support the creation of dedicated finishing capacity for Gorilla Glass for Auto Interiors.
So earlier this month, we announced an investment in a Hefei facility that will produce Gorilla Glass parts for automotive interiors. We expect it to be operational in 2019. In our life science vessels platform, we continue to make strong progress on the path to a new long term, multi $1,000,000,000 franchise. Valor Glass dramatically reduces particle contamination breaks and cracks while significantly increasing throughput. Valor helps protect patients and improve pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Our collaborators, Merck and Pfizer, continue to demonstrate support for Valor. In April, both joined us for the announcement of a high volume manufacturing facility in North Carolina, which was an important part of the plan we announced last July. Both companies also spoke about the merits of our technology and collaboration at separate industry conferences. In mid June, Merck presented its perspective and findings on an important patient safety attribute of VALOR. Later in the month, I joined a senior Pfizer leader to share some perspective on VALOR, a collaboration and Corning's long track record of co innovation.
At the event, Pfizer leadership affirmed its commitment to Valor. The leader said, We're working as fast as we reasonably can to provide those solutions we're talking about today. Early this Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration reaffirmed its commitment to support new technologies that can improve pharmaceutical manufacturing and help prevent drug shortages. We remain closely engaged with the FDA and support its efforts to address this important public health issue. We continue to believe VALOR has the potential to power Corning's growth for the next decade and beyond.
In display, we remain the global leader. Our priority is to deliver stable returns and win in new display categories, And progress is excellent this year. Television retail demand growth is LCD glass in more than a decade. We expect to reach the important milestone of annual price declines improving to a mid single digit percentage in the 3rd quarter, and we expect the improvement trend to continue into 2019. As we've discussed previously, we took advantage of seasonally lower demand to upgrade our fleet with the latest technology.
We're now completing those upgrades and our Gen 10.5 plant is ramping and in tandem with BOE's panel production. As a result of these actions, we expect display profitability to increase substantially in the second half of twenty eighteen. So we continue to make excellent progress across all our market access platforms. We are investing to capture opportunities and are well positioned to deliver another strong year of growth. Ultimately, we remain on track to fully achieve our strategy and capital allocation framework goals.
Now let me turn the call over to Tony for a review of our results and outlook.
Thank you, Wendell, and good morning. Our Q2 results set the foundation for a stronger than expected 2018. Each of our businesses grew sales year over year. After investing to support near and long term growth and to extend our market leadership, we are well positioned and expect to reach We expect to see sales and profitability improve significantly in Q3, and we plan to build on that going forward. Before I get into the details of our performance and results, I want to note that the primary difference between our GAAP and core results is again a non cash mark to market adjustment for our currency hedge contracts.
As we've discussed before, GAAP accounting requires earnings translation hedge contracts settling in future periods to be mark to market and recorded at current value at the end of each quarter, even though those contracts will not be settled in the current quarter. For us, this resulted in an after tax GAAP gain of $387,000,000 for the 2nd quarter. To be clear, this mark to market accounting has no impact on our cash flow. Our currency hedges protect us economically from foreign exchange rate fluctuations and provides higher certainty for our earnings and cash flow, our ability to invest for growth and our future shareholder distributions. Our non GAAP or core results provide additional transparency into operations by using a constant currency rate aligned with the economics of our underlying transactions.
We're very pleased with our hedging program and the economic certainty it provides. We received $1,600,000,000 under our hedge contracts since their inception slightly over 5 years ago. That brings me to our results and outlook. Our 2nd quarter core sales were up 9% year over year and EPS was 0 point 3 $8 The intensive operating and capital investments that we have discussed with you over the last several quarters are now yielding clear benefits. Our investments include the continuation of capacity expansions for optical fiber and cable, our Gen 10.5 HEPA display glass plant, capacity for gasoline particulate filters, Gorilla Glass projects for mobile devices and up for automotive, plus several other development projects.
These planned investments constrained our These planned investments constrained our gross and operating margin percentages in recent quarters. With several of the largest projects having crossed major thresholds, we are now at an inflection point. Our sales run rate is climbing and our gross margin is expanding. We expect to achieve approximately $11,300,000,000 in sales for the year and to expand gross margin to 42% in the second half. Turning to the balance sheet.
We ended the quarter with $2,000,000,000 of cash. Adjusted operating cash flow for the quarter was $833,000,000 Now let's look at the detailed segment results and outlook. Let's start with Display Technologies, where we're making great progress towards maintaining stable returns. Our results were in line with expectations. Retail sales are very strong globally and production at our new Gen 10.5 plant is ramping.
The pricing environment is the best it has been in more than a decade. 2nd quarter sales were $780,000,000 up sequentially and year over year. Net income was $192,000,000 2nd quarter sequential price declines were better than Q1 as expected. For the Q3, we expect sequential price declines to again be very moderate. These continuing improvements in sequential price declines will allow us to reach the important milestone of annual price declines improving to a mid single digit percentage in the 3rd quarter and for that improvement trend to continue into 2019.
Three factors drive our view that this more favorable pricing environment will continue. First, we expect glass supply to continue to be balanced or even tight. Our new Gen 10.5 plant supports the expected growth large sized TVs. It is co located with and dedicated to our customer BOE. We pace and align capacity in tandem with BOE to ensure our Gen 10.5 black supply is balanced to demand.
The ramp is on schedule. Now we expect the glass supply demand balance below Gen 10.5 to tighten further because demand continues to grow in 2018, but public information indicates there is little capacity growth planned in this segment by glassmakers. 2nd, our competitors continue to face profitability challenges at current pricing levels. Therefore, we expect their price declines will slow further as they try to remain profitable. And 3rd, LCD glass manufacturing requires ongoing investments in current and new capacity to support growth.
To generate acceptable returns on investment, glass pricing will need to improve even further. For Corning, we will only add capacity if we can get an attractive return for our shareholders. Now moving to retail, TV demand was very strong in Q2. Viewing area grew double digits year over year worldwide. Strong demand was driven by lower panel prices, which are having a positive impact on TV retail prices and thus consumer demand.
We expect TV retail demand to remain robust for the rest of the year. As for the LCD glass market, 2nd quarter total market volume grew low single digits sequentially, and our volume grew faster as we ramp production in FA in line with our April guidance. In the Q3 of 2018, we expect the LCD glass market volume to grow mid single digit sequentially and our volume to grow faster as we continue ramping production in Hefe in tandem with BOE's Gen10.5 demand. For the full year, we continue to expect LCD Glass market volume to grow mid single digits as television screen size growth continues. We expect our volume for the full year to grow faster than the market driven by half a Gen 10.5 ramp up.
In brief, we feel very good about price and volume. As we described last quarter, first half display gross margin was affected by 2 factors, the Hefe startup and fleet optimization. Now that our factory utilization is increasing, our productivity and gross margins in the second half of the year should improve. In summary, we remain very pleased with the current dynamics in our display business and our progress in maintaining stable returns. Let's move to Optical Communications.
2nd quarter sales were up 16% year over year and exceeded $1,000,000,000 Sales growth was driven by both our data centers and carrier customers. Net income was $150,000,000 up 17% year over year. As expected, capacity utilization and profitability increased due to volume growth and progress on our capital expansion initiatives. We're continuing to bring additional capacity online in the second half to support committed demand. In Q2, we successfully closed the acquisition of 3 ms's Communication Markets division.
In 2018, this transaction will add about $200,000,000 in sales and be neutral to EPS due to integration costs. As previously announced, we expect it will be accretive in 2019 and beyond. We expect 3rd quarter sales to be up about 25% year over year, including sales from the recently acquired business from 3 ms. Given the strong first half and our second half outlook, we now expect full year sales to be up by a high teens percentage year over year with organic growth improving to the low teens and an additional $200,000,000 in sales from the 3 ms acquisition. Overall, we are growing optical communications faster than the market.
These additional sales are driven by preference for ADDvantage solutions in the data center and carrier markets and enabled by increased fiber and cable output from our new capacity expansions. We're excited about the growth we're delivering. Environmental Technologies 2nd quarter sales were 3 $17,000,000 up 21%. All products contributed to our growth. 2nd quarter net income was up 42% driven by volume growth in all product categories as well as strong performance in our manufacturing operations.
As anticipated, the North America heavy duty market continues the improvement that began in the second half of last year, driving 21% year over year sales growth in our diesel business for Q2. In auto, we are also growing our sales faster than the market. Sales were up 21% due to more awarded platforms and a shift to premium products. Additionally, gasoline particulate filters contributed to the growth as OEMs ramp for full adoption of Euro 6 regulations in September. We are making progress with capacity and engineering investments to support the ramp of the GPF business.
We expect the strong performance to continue in the 3rd quarter where sales grew up high teens year over year. We are also increasing our full year sales outlook to mid teens growth year over year. We expect continued strength in sales of all products, including ramping GPS sales. In Specialty Materials, 2nd quarter sales were $343,000,000 and net income was $64,000,000 Sales were ahead of expectations and up 2% year over year, driven by higher Gorilla Glass shipments as OEMs begin to ramp for second half product releases. While underlying operations remained solid, net income for the quarter was impacted by product development costs.
Although the overall smartphone market is maturing, we continue to progress towards our long term goal to extend our leadership in mobile consumer electronics and double sales. Our ability to innovate and deliver value added product at a premium price is playing out as we expected. We delivered another breakthrough innovation with last week's launch of Gorilla Glass 6. We also introduced Gorilla Glass DX and DX Plus to capture more value in wearables. Innovations like these increase the value of our glass, extend our differentiation and support using more glass in more places.
We expect strong shipments of innovative new products in the second half. For Q3, we expect sales to be up about 10% year over year. We expect the additional sales to generate strong Specialty Materials earnings growth throughout the second half. In Life Sciences, 2nd quarter sales were $245,000,000 up 11% year over year and net income was $31,000,000 up 41%, driven by strong demand and manufacturing performance. We continue to outpace market growth.
3rd quarter sales are expected to grow by a mid single digit percentage over last year. We are also increasing our full year sales outlook to be up by a mid to high single digit percentage over last year. So for 2018, all of our businesses have positive momentum. We now expect full year sales of about $11,300,000,000 which is up 10%. Now I'll share some additional outlook details.
First, let's turn to gross margin. We expect our gross margin to expand to 42% in the 3rd and 4th quarters, up significantly from the first half and versus last year. Annual operating expenses should remain consistent with year as a percentage of sales. For the full year, SG and A is expected to be about 14% of sales and RD and E about 8%. We expect other income, other expense in Q3 to remain at our 2nd quarter run rate of about 55 $1,000,000 to $65,000,000 For the full year, we expect a net expense of approximately $210,000,000 to $220,000,000 Full year 2018 gross equity earnings are expected to be similar to 2017 at just over $200,000,000 predominantly from Hemlock Semiconductor with the Q3 at approximately $20,000,000 to $30,000,000 consistent with the typical seasonality.
Recall that the timing of contracts typically make Hemlock's 4th quarter its strongest. Our tax rate for the 3rd quarter and full year should be similar to Q2 at about 21.7%. Now the slides we're showing give you an additional modeling related detail for the 3rd quarter and the full year. In 2018, we expect to spend slightly more than $2,000,000,000 on capital expenditures with programs in every market access platform. How much more will depend on how quickly we ramp some of our investments.
We will continue to keep you posted as the year progresses. Finally, we do not a material impact from the enacted or contemplated tariffs. First of all, TVs are not on the current list of proposed tariffs. 2nd, it's our philosophy to manufacture products in the same region as our customer. This philosophy minimizes our cross border activity and makes us less susceptible to the impact of tariffs.
3rd, we are not big consumers of aluminum and steel, so we expect minimal impact from related tariffs. So in total, we do not expect a significant financial impact from tariffs. In closing, our 2nd quarter results underscore that we're well positioned and on track for the second half of our 4 year strategy and capital allocation framework. We now expect an even stronger 2018. We expect to reach approximately $11,300,000,000 in full year sales with second half capacity and margin expansion.
We expect continued growth in Optical Communications, Specialty Materials, Environmental Technologies and Life Sciences. And as we've said, the display pricing environment is the best in more than a decade, and we expect to reach the important on the framework included returning $829,000,000 to shareholders in the Q2 of 2018 for a total of $10,800,000,000 since the framework's introduction. We're also investing to position our businesses to meet short and long term sales growth opportunities. Putting it all together, as we invest 10 $1,000,000,000 to drive growth and extend our leadership, we are rewarding investors by returning more than $12,500,000,000 which compounds the benefit of our future growth for long term shareholders. With that, let's move to Q and A.
Anne?
Thanks, Tony. Our operator, we're ready for our first question.
Midee Houssini, please go ahead. Mr. Hosseini, your line is open.
Yes, sorry, I had a problem with my phone. Thanks for taking my call. I want to go back to the comment regarding Gorilla use in auto. It's encouraging to see investment taking place, especially in Hefei. How should we think about incremental revenue contribution?
It would be great if you give us some milestones looking into the next year 2020. And then I have a follow-up regarding display. You talked about the best pricing environment. I think you said ever. When I hear the best pricing environment, it kind of makes me worry because can it get even better from here or can it roll over from here?
It will be great if you could elaborate how you see the sustainability of the current pricing environment. Thank you.
So let's start with your first question on Gorilla and Auto. We're not quite ready to give insight on to how much revenues we'd expect next year in Gorilla and Auto. What I will say is we've already got awarded business for 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars spread out over time to certain platforms. How that timing breaks down, what our ability to supply will be relative to demand, all those things are things we're working through. So we're not quite ready to cycle that and figure out exactly when that's going to be delivered for each vehicle platform.
But we're going to try to get there as we work through the end of this year, so we can be helpful to you going into next year.
Maybe let me take your question on display pricing. We feel really good about display pricing and the trends that we've seen. It is the best pricing we've seen in more than a decade. And we do expect we expect to hit the important milestone of mid single digit year over year declines in the Q3, and we think that improvement trend continues into 2019. There's really three reasons for that.
I mean, the first, we have supply and demand imbalance of even type from a glassmaker standpoint. Secondly, our competitors face profitability challenges at current pricing levels. Therefore, we expect their price declines will slow further as they try to remain profitable. And then the 3rd item is LCD glass manufacturing requires ongoing investments. And to generate acceptable returns on those investments, glass pricing will need to improve further.
So overall, we feel very good about where we are.
And we don't need we really don't need everything to continue to improve and improve. What we need to do is just that rate of decline to continue to slow and as long as that rate of decline continues to slow, our productivity will more than offset those price declines. So that's what we're aiming for.
Very helpful. Thank you.
We have a question from Vijay Bhagavath with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hey, good morning. Yes. Hey, Wendell, I have a bigger picture question. I mean, the company has been investing in multiple capital expansion projects.
I mean, I could count to maybe 20 and then I gave up. So my question is, you're going through this kind of meaningful investment cycle. What's the timeframe you have in mind for subsequent investments in manufacturing capacity expansion and then the harvesting time when you start monetizing these investments? Thanks.
P. J, that's a great question. First of all, you're doing a good job on counting, right? We do have over 20 significant plant expansions, including a number of included in that are a number of greenfield builds. So we are in this pretty intense operating and capital investment cycle.
Here's the good news. I think you're going to start to see the harvest begin now. We expect that we're in an inflection point in this quarter and that you're going to see growing sales from those capacity investments and expanding profitability from them. So I do not think we need to wait long. I think we're going to start seeing that right in quarter 3 and quarter 4 and beyond.
Is that responsive to your question, Vijay?
You know it does. Yes. Thanks, Wendell. Yes.
Our next question is from Steven Fox with Cross Research. Please go ahead.
Just on the capacity expansions to date and looking ahead, Wendell and Tony, you mentioned a few times that you have committed customer support for a lot of these expansions. Can you just give us an idea of how you're managing that risk? Obviously, the customer forecast can change going forward and how that would affect you. And then secondly, how do we get comfortable with the idea that what you went through in the first half of the year was unique and we don't see another sort of mini capital burst next year or the year after as you continue to innovate? Thanks.
I'll take the first one and Tony can address the second. So we mitigate our risk with these investments a number different ways and it really depends on the business and the customer relationships. Sometimes we actually insist that the customer fund or put their money by our side in our capital. That significantly mitigates our shareholders' exposure to any overcapacity risk. Another way we do it is long term contracts with firm levels of revenue commitment.
Sometimes those are very public, sometimes they're not. The best example of this would be what you saw from Verizon with their long term commitment to revenue from us for $1,000,000,000 to help underpin that investment in fiber and cable. And we have all sorts of variations really in between. Our core philosophy here is since what we do is so important to our customers, we want to do it in tandem with them. Now that doesn't mean that our customers are always right and that the demand always comes in as we both anticipate.
But it does mean that we're sharing the risk in an equitable way that allows us to provide our unique products and ability to supply to help make their vision for what they're trying to deliver in their business model possible.
And I think from a going forward basis, Steve, I think the important thing to keep in mind is that we're going through a period where we're seeing growth in all of our market access platforms. And the good news is that, that growth is showing up right now. As Wendell said, the inflection point is today. And our second half revenue is going to be the annualized is closer to $12,000,000,000 as opposed to the first half closer to $10,000,000,000 So we're seeing very significant growth and the payoffs are really happening in the near term. As we look forward, of course, we're going to continue to invest where that growth is.
I think the probabilities of all of our market access platforms growing at the same time is probably less than what we've experienced right now. And on top of it, whatever that investment is, is going to be on a much bigger business than what we were even 6 months ago. So as we look through both of those things, I think we feel pretty good about how we think about that on a going forward basis.
Great. That's really helpful. Appreciate it.
Question is from Samik Chatterjee with JPMorgan.
Hi, good morning. I just wanted to start off with the display glass segment and you mentioned you expect pricing to continue to improve in 2019. What are you hearing from your panel maker customers because panel prices have been down significantly in 2Q? Are you expecting any sort of cutbacks in capacity from them that might limit some growth in area in 2019? And then I had a minor clarification on the gross margin guidance for the second half.
I think the language you used last quarter was that gross margin would exceed 42% on a quarterly basis in the back half and today I think you mentioned 42%. So is there any change in the gross margin expectation for the back half? Thank you.
No, there's no change in the gross margin expectations for the back half. We feel very good about bringing the capacity on and the expansion that we're going to see versus what we performed in the last three quarters. In terms of from a panel maker standpoint, demand at the end of the day, what really matters here is the retail demand. And the retail demand has been very strong. As we mentioned, viewing area was up over 20% on a year over year basis in the Q2.
And then we're seeing indications from panel makers that they're buying panels to prepare for what is really the big season, which is in the Q4, and that's happening right now. So we expect panoramicual utilizations to stay about where they have been in the first half of the year. And that's going to translate to a strong glass demand. And we expect the market to be up in the mid single digits from a glass standpoint. And of course, we'll grow faster than that because of the ramp of the Gen 10.5 factory at BOE.
Great. Thank you.
And our next question is from Rob Churra with Guggenheim Partners.
Thanks very much. Just on Gorilla Glass, I know you noted you're benefiting from the increase in content per phone like with the double sided, which is great. And I believe you also get a price premium when you launch something like Gorilla Glass 6. I'm just wondering, I guess, first, how much the Gorilla Glass 6 price premium? I mean, is that a noticeable help in the second half?
And more broadly, it seems to me and I'm just I'm not even sure if it's the case, it seems that Gorilla Glass pricing has been better than it was a couple of years ago, where it was pretty brutal. And I'm just wondering, I mean, is that the case? And has ROAD glass pricing stabilized? If that's the case, why?
So you are correct in that Gorilla Glass pricing trends have been very good. And what's causing that is been a really strong cycle of innovations from us. And those innovations are yielding much better products and customers value those products more and are willing to give us a higher price for them. So you are noticing in the numbers that fundamental strategy playing out. I'm sorry, but I'm not willing at this time to give you specific guidance on Gorilla Glass 6 pricing that will be between us and our customers and sell them here shortly.
But I think you're correct on the overall trend, Rob.
Great, great. Thank you very much.
And our next question is from Rod Hall with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, guys. Thanks for the question. I just wanted to come back to this auto glass plant in Hefei and ask what you guys think the utilization of that plant is likely to be once you get it built? I mean, are you expecting it to be mostly utilized?
Or do you think that it just incrementally gets utilized over time, you just kind of end up point where you need capacity? And then secondly, I wanted to I noticed the R and D to sales guidance is up a little bit. I just wanted to double check why that what's driving that, why you decided to make that slight change in R and D to sales? Thanks.
Let me address the first one and I'll hit the second one for Tony. So Rod, what's happening to us is, as we shared previously, is the demand for our innovations in auto glass interiors has surprised us in a positive direction. So as a result, at this point in time, we're having a difficult time keeping up with what our customers want us to do. So if we could have had this plant 6 months earlier be up and running, we would have it full. So we expect the utilization to run pretty high.
I think it's just worth pausing here a moment though so you understand what type of capacity this is. You shouldn't think of this as melting capacity. We don't need to add any Gorilla Glass manufacturing capacity to facilitate our entry into the automotive glass market. We plan to meet all that demand with our continued productivity improvement on the Fusion platform for today's Gorilla Glass business as well as display. What this plant is going to do is going to be applying some of our vapor deposition technology to be able to do advanced optical treatments.
It's going to be able to do shaping of the product. It's going to be able to do the decoration of the product, cutting it exactly the right way. So it's the value add part on top of it. So as a result of that, you're not going to see the typical utilization effects you'd be used to thinking about in a big time glass factory. The capital intensity of this is much less.
So that's what this capacity is. Is that responsive to your question, Mark?
Yes. Thanks, Alain. That's super helpful. Appreciate it.
And Rod, on the RD and E, there really isn't a change there. I mean, we expect to spend about the same amount in the second half as we spent in the first half. The actual spending always depends a little bit on pacing of projects, but the amount that we're guiding is in the normal range that we've been guiding for a while.
Our next question is from George Notter with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks very much. I guess I wanted to dig into display segment margins a bit. So I heard what you said certainly on re skinning of tanks and improved utilization. Where do you think we could get segment net income margins to go to?
And if I look back at those numbers, I think there's some 30% numbers if I look back to last year and the year before. If I go way, way back, I can even see 40% segment and income margin types numbers. Where do you think we can go with these improvements in utilization and BOE? George, I think it's important to realize that what we're all about in display is stabilizing the profitability in that business. And we do that with continued what we've seen from a pricing standpoint.
As Wendell said, we don't need any further pricing improvements than where we are today. But with that, along with volume growth, along with our manufacturing improvements, we're all about getting that bottom line to essentially be the same. And that's what our objective is. That also means that sales will be about the same. And so once you get to that point, the operating margin will be about where it is today.
But obviously, that's a significant improvement over the last few years where we've seen that decline for several years where we've seen significant decline in display profitability.
And our next question is James Faucette with Morgan Stanley.
Thank you very much. I guess maybe I'd relay probably one of the most common questions we've gotten recently and that has to do with capital allocation. As we kind of trot towards the end of 2019, we can see how that's likely to be divided up, etcetera.
At what point should we expect to see
a new plan or further forward outlook on capital allocation? And can you give us a general outline on in terms of your preferences for dividends versus buybacks, etcetera? Thanks.
I think, James, it's important to note that we have more than a year to go in our current framework. And so what we're really focused on is delivering our 4 year plan. The good news is all of our existing businesses, especially displays, are generating strong operating cash flow, and we expect that to continue. And the other piece of good news is we have multiple large opportunities for growth in all of our market access platforms. So we're going to continue to invest in those opportunities, especially those because they generate attractive return on invested capital to our shareholders.
And it's been our practice is that anything beyond that, we're going to return to our shareholders. So that's how we think about it going forward. But in terms of specifics and how things are going to look beyond 2019, we're just going to wait until we get closer to the end of the current plan before we share the next set of specifics.
Amy, we have time for a couple more questions.
Our next question is Wamsi Mohan from Bank of America.
Wendell, I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about the dynamics in specialty as it pertains to Gorilla. Some of your larger smartphone customers are not showing as much cyclicality as in prior cycles. And I was wondering if that is giving you more supply chain visibility as it pertains to Gorilla and is it changing the nature of lead times for Gorilla?
That's an excellent question. We have noticed some of those trends that you are outlining. But they just haven't been around long enough for us to be able to say with a high degree of confidence that we see a strong improvement in visibility. That's main effect as you know just tends to be in which quarter we actually tend to see the sale. So it doesn't really impact us from a long term financial standpoint, but it's certainly valuable from an operational standpoint.
So more to come on this topic. If this continues, then I think your logic is very sound. But it needs to continue further for us to establish good, strong mathematical modeling and conclusions.
If I could follow-up just with one quick question on TVs and I'm sorry if you already addressed this. But I was wondering, given the panel price declines and the magnitude of those panel price declines, how stimulative has that been to large screen TV demand? And what are you expecting for retail sellout trends in the back half of the year?
Wams, I mean, I think it's been quite similar to it and it's been very strong from a retail demand standpoint. Glass viewing area was over 20% in the first half of the year, and we expect it to continue to be very strong in the second half of the year. That's why we're quite confident that the glass market will grow mid single digits on a year over year basis and we'll grow faster than that because of the ramp of our BOE Gen 10.5 factory.
And just to build on that, I think one of the main things that people can lose sight of is in the end what really matters is how many televisions that people buy, right? And how much is sold through the whole system. And we've certainly been in a cycle where the panel market went from incredibly high utilization and rising prices. And then I think that probably caused television demand to be a little suppressed from where I would want to be. Now we've been through another cycle like you're seeing with display panel prices having fallen, now flowing through to the end customer.
And I think this ebb and flow will continue to work its way out, but we really like the CELT data we're seeing. And of course, we would hope that panel prices would continue to stabilize and improve over time. And that in turn of course that the glass supply and demand dynamics continue to work towards a path of us improving our pricing performance year by year. So that's sort of the way we take a look at the industry overall.
Thanks so much for the color. Appreciate it.
And our last question is Joseph Wolf with Barclays.
Thank you. I just had a question, I guess, a continuation a little bit on the mobile market. Given some of the move to OLED and Corning's participation in both parts of the market, Just can you give us some perspective on what you're seeing on the design side? There's been some talk about flexible applications. And while I know there's nothing customer specific you can share, can you talk about what flexible designs might mean for the Gorilla Glass cover market?
So first let's do OLED and then we'll do Flexible. So as you know, we made a pretty significant amount of innovation effort to put us in a spot to be a very strong supplier into the polyimide OLED market. For those of you on the call who don't know, even though the polyamide OLED isn't made of glass, to make it, you consume a lot of glass. Actually, you consume more glass than is consumed in making a display at the same size using active matrix LCD technology. And it's special glass, it's glass we developed for that application.
So with that being said, that I think is what we predicted I think quite accurately that we could see that becoming even though it's a small market, a significant force for mobile consumer electronics devices. What has been in the press really now for a number of years and it's been hyped for a number of years is the idea of a truly flexible device, which has never been a flexible display. And what the idea here is could we basically make something small that then you could fold it out and it would become something big. And that therefore you could fit more display area in a smaller volume area. So that has real interest and we've been engaged for a number of years in trying to solve some of those really hard technical problems to be able to make a product that bends to very tight bend radius, but at the same time when something is dropped on it or it experiences any sort of sharp event that it doesn't damage easily or scratch easily.
These two things in terms of material science tend to push opposite from one another and has been the core of our innovation focus. I think that ultimately if foldables are going to be important, we're going to need to solve that problem for the cover. We're already there's still problems to solve in the display, but ultimately we'd have to solve that problem. I don't think it's solved yet. So I think some of the first devices you'll see to try to market out will be products that are compromising on durability in one direction or the other.
But I think it's just the stage of the tech. Think people will want to introduce it to get a feel for will consumers really get interested in it. Can they make even a form factor that's compelling? These are really big questions. But at the core, we still don't yet we haven't yet seen the cover material out of any material that combines all the required attributes for this to become a significant device.
But it takes a good amount of effort on our We're still working on it. We're working closely with our mobile consumer electronics customers. They really want us to invent something, but we're still on it. Sorry for the long answer.
No, that's very helpful. I will leave it at that. Thank you.
Thanks, Joseph. And thank you, Wendell. And thank you all for joining us this morning. Before we close, I wanted to let everyone know that know that we will be at the Jefferies Semiconductor Hardware and Communications Summit on August 30 and the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference on September 12. We'll also be posting some virtual presentations and webcast on business topics.
Finally, the web replay of today's call will be available on our site starting later this morning. There also is a telephone replay available for the next 2 weeks and you can contact IR for the details. Once again, thank you all for joining us. Amy, that concludes our call. Please disconnect all lines.