I’ve got one for you: specialty glassmaker Corning. Founded in 1851, Corning makes highly engineered glass for a host of applications: Glass for TVs, PCs, and mobile phones. Glass for automotive displays and pollution control systems. Glass for vaccine vials and solar panels. And glass in the form of fiberoptic cable, which is used, among other places, in AI data centers.

Corning’s recent financial results have been ugly. Revenue has been down year over year for six straight quarters, and the June quarter will likely extend the string to seven. Declines in multiple key markets—smartphones, TVs, autos, and telecommunications—have battered the business.

But CEO Wendell Weeks thinks a turnaround is at hand, thanks to improvements in the underlying businesses along with underappreciated new opportunities. Like AI.

Weeks sees a “springboard” coming. He predicts Corning can boost annual revenue by at least $3 billion by 2026—and potentially as much as $5 billion—on top of the $13.6 billion in revenue the company reported in 2023.

“Material science is really slow, until it gets fast,” Weeks told me this past week. “You work in an area, and you work, and it takes a long time. We’re talking about the composition of matter. And then a catalyzing customer application comes along and all of a sudden you have a big secular trend take off.” That trend? Well, you know.

Before we get to the details, it’s worth noting a few other things playing in Corning’s favor.

“The springboard framework is all about this combination of cyclical and secular growth coming together,” Weeks says. “We have this $3 billion-plus sales opportunity over the next three years in which we have high confidence. And because we already have the capacity in place to execute on that, the margins in the incremental revenue should be outstanding.” That’s an important point: Corning doesn’t need to spend a fortune here to build infrastructure.

On the cyclical side, Corning sees growth ahead in the automotive sector, for curved glass displays inside electric and autonomous vehicles, and from increased use of its gas particulate filters, widely used overseas and about to get adopted in the U.S. thanks to new Environmental Protection Agency emissions rules.

Weeks also sees a rebound coming in non-AI fiberoptic cable. That business has been down double-digits over the past year, including a 17% drop in the March quarter. But, Weeks says, it has averaged 7% growth over the long haul, and should rebound as telcos work down inventory.

Meanwhile, Weeks expects Corning to start seeing increased fiber demand next year from the rollout of a $42.5 billion federal government program known as BEAD—Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment—to make high-speed connectivity available in underserved areas. He also sees a boost to display glass volumes from a gradual increase in average TV screen sizes.

But the big opportunity comes from AI. As Weeks notes, fiberoptic cable is crucial to every cloud data center, linking processors to each other. That is even more important for AI, where the computing power comes from the interconnection of thousands and someday millions of graphics processing units, or GPUs, made by Nvidia and others. “I have been doing this a long time,” Weeks says. “And we have a pretty unprecedented opportunity right now.”

Weeks says systems that rely on Nvidia’s popular Hopper H100 GPUs require 10 times the fiber used in a conventional server rack.

Corning formed a dedicated team four years ago to solve the problem, Weeks notes. The company invented thinner fiber, new cabling, new connectors, and a new system to tie them together. Weeks says the new approach offers 60% higher density and 70% less labor for installation. The system starts shipping this quarter.

The math should steadily improve for Corning as systems get even denser over time. When Nvidia launches its powerful new Blackwell chips later this year, the number of GPUs per rack more than doubles, to 74 from 32. That means more connections, and more fiber. When that happens, Weeks says, Corning’s revenue per rack should double.

Corning shares have rallied 25% this year, but they still trade at a relatively modest 2.3 times expected 2024 sales, and about 20 times adjusted earnings. With growth set to explode and its AI business still emerging, the undiscovered Corning story might not stay that way for long.

Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com