Investing in glass: Why not? Have you ever really stopped to think about how much stuff glass is in? As a species, we've used glass for thousands of years and we're still using this amazing material for all sorts of new reasons.
The global float glass market was valued at $53 million in 2020 and is projected to reach $86 million by 2028. It should grow at a CAGR of 5.2% from 2021 to 2028. Intrigued, maybe for the first time, to invest in this amazing product?
Let's explore why investing in glass makes sense and a few companies to consider this year.
Why Invest in Glass?
Take a look at the room you're sitting in right now. How many items are made of soda ash and silica? If you put together the various sectors and products that use glass, from windows to automobiles to solar panels and more, you'd come up with a pretty long list.
Glass offers wide exposure to a range of end markets with products galore. From the Glass Alliance Europe, here are a few end products to think about before you invest:
- Packaging (jars for food, bottles for drinks, flacon for cosmetics and pharmaceuticals)
- Tableware
- Housing and buildings (windows, facades, insulation, reinforcement structures)
- Interior design and furnitures (mirrors, partitions, balustrades, tables, shelves, lighting)
- Appliances and electronics (oven doors, cooktops, TVs, computer screens, smartphones)
- Automotive and transport (windscreens, backlights, glass for cars, aircrafts, ships, etc.)
- Medical technology, biotechnology, life science engineering, optical glass
- Radiation protection from X-rays and gamma rays
- Fiber optic cables (phones, TVs and computers)
- Renewable energy (solar energy glass, wind turbines)
3 Glass Stocks for Right Now
We'll consider three companies you may want to consider: Corning Inc., Apogee Enterprises Inc. and
Corning Inc. develops and manufactures specialty glass and ceramics and provides glass for notebook computers, flat panel desktop monitors, display televisions and other information display applications. It also provides glass for carrier network and enterprise network products for the telecommunications industry and ceramic substrates for gasoline and diesel engines in automotive and heavy duty vehicle markets. It doesn't end there. It also provides glass for laboratory products for the scientific community and specialized polymer products for biotechnology applications and advanced optical materials for the semiconductor industry and the scientific community. It has several segments, including display technologies, optical communications, environmental technologies, specialty materials and life sciences.
Corning delivered year-over-year growth in Q4, with Q4 core sales of $3.7 billion and core EPS of $0.54. Full-year core sales grew 23% and full-year core EPS grew 49% to $2.07, with free cash flow nearly doubling to $1.8 billion. It expects to continue strong growth in Q1 2022, with core sales of $3.5 billion to $3.7 billion and core EPS of $0.48 to $0.53. Corning also expects approximately $15 billion in 2022 sales.
Apogee Enterprises Inc., headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, designs and develops architectural products and services through architectural glass, aluminum framing systems and installation services for buildings. It also creates glazing products for custom picture framing. The company has several segments, including architectural framing systems, architectural glass, architectural services and large-scale optical technologies. Various segments design, engineer, fabricate and finish aluminum window, curtain wall, storefront and entrance systems as well as coated glass used in custom window and wall systems.
Q3 2021 revenue grew 6.6% to $334 million and Q3 earnings hit $0.44 per diluted share, which includes $6.4 million of pre-tax restructuring and impairment costs. Adjusted earnings were $0.63 per diluted share.
View Operating Corporation, headquartered in Milpitas, California, a technology company, develops, manufactures and sells smart building products. View opened its first factory in 2012 and it can produce five million square feet of glass per year.
Its product portfolio includes its patented View Smart Glass that comprises electrochromic glass panels in the form of insulating glass units. It also produces View Net, a cloud-connected network infrastructure offering that can incorporate and power smart building devices. The company has deployed millions of square feet of smart glass.
It also features View Immersive Experiences, which transforms View Smart Glass windows into transparent, digital and interactive surfaces. Its View Sense modules measure and optimize light, humidity, temperature, air quality, dust, and noise. Finally, its View Smart Protect product is an intrusion detection solution that can be deployed on View Smart Glass windows to improve the security of a building by detecting glass breakage. The company is producing some amazing technologies, with the definition of smart window development at its fingertips.
View's Q1 2021 highlights include GAAP revenue of $11.8 million, a 29% increase from Q1 2020. GAAP operating expenses were $37.1 million, a 16% improvement from Q1 2020. The company had a non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA of $37.8 million, a 31% improvement compared to Q1 2020 reflecting higher revenues.
Investing in Glass Could Reflect Huge Earnings
Glass is a simple concept to understand, and that's one of the reasons we like it. Even if glass is smart (maybe even smarter than all of us) because it can harvest solar power, tint on demand or whatnot, it's worth a consideration because it's used in literally just about everything.
Furthermore, can you just see tomorrow's smart buildings filled with smart glass? It's where it's going. Want a few more investment options? Check out O-I Glass (OI), Methode Electronics (MEI) and Crown ElectroKinetics (CRKN). They might also help you hone in on the right kind of glass stocks for your portfolio.
Before you consider Corning, you'll want to hear this.
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