CORNING, N.Y. , May 19 -- Corning Inc. said today it is confident it will meet its targets for second-quarter results and that it still expects to return to profitability by the third quarter.
The company said it still expects sales to be in the range of $715 million to $745 million and results in the range of a loss of $0.02 per share to income of $0.01 per share for the second quarter.
"I continue to believe that we are on track to meet our goals by the third quarter, if not earlier," said Corning President and COO Wendell P. Weeks. He and Corning Vice Chairman and CFO James B. Flaws will meet with investors during a two-day trip in the Midwest starting this week, the company said in a statement.
Corning said it continues to make "significant progress" on the company’s three main priorities: protecting its financial health, restoring profitability in 2003 and investing in the future. It had $1.8 billion in cash and short-term investments and access to a $2 billion credit line at the end of the first quarter, and recently completed an equity offering in April, which yielded $267 million in cash.
"We believe our liquidity position is very adequate to meet our ongoing operating needs and to fund our debt reduction program," Flaws said. "To date, we have reduced the amount of outstanding debt from $4.9 billion at the end of 2001 to about $3.8 billion today."
Flaws said Corning's recently announced sale of its photonic technologies business to Avanex Corp. is likely to result in a second-quarter charge of $50 million to $70 million and that the cash impact of the transaction to Corning will be $40 million to $50 million, including a $20 million contribution to Avanex.
For more information, visit: www.corning.com