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Corning planning to hire in Taiwan amid sales gains

Corning Inc, which cut its workforce by more than half since 2001 as sales of its fiber-optical cable plummeted, will add workers this year to keep pace with soaring demand for glass used in liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) for flat-panel televisions and computer monitors.

Employment should rise from about 20,000 at the end of last year, chief financial officer Jim Flaws said in an interview. He declined to provide a specific number of hires. Most of the new jobs will be at LCD-glass factories in Japan and Taiwan.

Shipments of LCD glass rose 50 percent last year and are expected to rise 30 percent to 50 percent this year, Flaws said.

Corning said it sold out of glass during fourth-quarter, and is adding capacity to keep up with demand from customers such as Samsung Corp and Sharp Corp.

"This one business is supplying all of its profit and more than offsetting the loss of its other businesses," said Needham & Co analyst John Harmon.

"That's going to drive the company over the next couple of years," he said.

The company said on Feb. 5 that it would invest US$600 million during the next two years to expand its LCD glass plants in Shizuoka, Japan, and Tainan.

Corning had cut about 21,000 positions since 2001 as sales of fiber-optic cable dropped after telephone and Internet carriers built networks for traffic that never materialized. The company can better predict demand for LCD glass by tracking sales of LCD televisions and notebook computers, Flaws said.

"Nobody buys a notebook computer they're not going to use," Flaws said in a March 19 interview. "In telecom, there were no end-market statistics."

Corning expects LCD televisions, which require larger, more expensive sheets of glass than notebook computers, to fuel future sales growth, Flaws said.

About 3 percent of televisions sold last year had LCD displays, a number that is expected to rise to 16 percent in 2006, Harmon said.

Corning's revenue in its display technologies business, which includes LCD glass, rose 47 percent to US$595 million last year from US$405 million a year earlier. Net sales last year slipped to US$3.09 billion from US$3.16 billion.
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