Ciena Corporation / Corning Incorporated: Tim's 2 Things for 2 Stocks in 2H

Research evidence excerpt

Ciena Corporation / Corning Incorporated: Tim's 2 Things for 2 Stocks in 2H

Equity Research

20 May 2026

Ciena Corporation / Corning Incorporated

Tim's 2 Things for 2 Stocks in 2H

We are starting a new report series discussing the two most

important topics for stocks that generally get looked at

together by investors. While CIEN (OW) and GLW (EW) have GLW EQUAL WEIGHT IT Hardware and

very different businesses, they are both in the AI/optical CommunicationsEquipment NEUTRAL

bucket and have broken out after years of range-bound Price Target USD 180.00

performance. Price (18-May-26) USD 178.55 Potential Upside/Downside +0.8%

Source: Bloomberg, Barclays Research

We are starting a new report series where we compare and contrast stocks that are often looked

at together given industry exposure. In this initial report, we focus on the high-profile optical CIEN OVERWEIGHT

sector and CIEN and GLW. We will look at the cloud/AI businesses of each company, which are IT Hardware and

Communications NEUTRAL

clearly driving growth and valuation. We will also dig into each company's other business lines, Equipment

which are much more significant as a percentage of revenues for GLW than for CIEN. Price Target USD 372.00

Price (18-May-26) USD 524.53

Conclusion: Our analysis favors CIEN over GLW as a play on optical, even though both stocks Potential Upside/Downside -29.1%

imply triple-digit p/e multiples for their AI businesses, on our estimates, and both have been big Source: Bloomberg, Barclays Research

stock winners this year and last.

• Thing 1 (Cloud/AI): CIEN has more AI exposure (53%) than GLW (17%), and we see a better IT Hardware and Communications

Equipment

chance of success in incremental TAMs thanks to new network layers and ownership of core Tim Long