Celestica doubled inventory and raised equity while Corning cited shared-cost contracts

Two suppliers to AI data centers reported third-quarter results within a day of each other, and their filings show different ways of paying for growth. Celestica (NYSE: CLS) built inventory and raised $3.45 billion in an equity offering, while Corning (NYSE: GLW) pointed to long-term customer agreements that share the cost of new capacity, according to their Celestica and Corning releases.

What the two companies reported

Celestica, which builds networking, compute and storage hardware for data centers, said third-quarter revenue was $5.83 billion, up 83% from $3.19 billion a year earlier. Its connectivity and cloud segment grew 102%. FinanceInTime covered the results when they were released.

Corning, a materials maker, reported core sales of $5.08 billion, up 19%, and said its optical communications sales rose 44% to $2.38 billion. Its results showed generative AI product sales growing more than 100%. The two companies differ in scale of growth, 83% against 19%, and in what they sell, so the comparison below concerns how each funds that growth, not which is larger.

The numbers behind it

Celestica's balance sheet changed sharply between December 31, 2025 and September 30, 2026. Computed from the release's balance sheet, the changes were as follows.

Item	September 30, 2026	December 31, 2025	Change (computed)
Cash and cash equivalents	$3,961.3 million	$595.6 million	6.7 times
Accounts receivable, net	$3,763.1 million	$2,638.1 million	up 42.6%
Inventories	$4,509.7 million	$2,188.0 million	up 106.1%
Property, plant and equipment, net	$1,403.3 million	$586.0 million	up 139.5%

Source: Celestica's condensed consolidated balance sheet. Changes computed by FinanceInTime.

The cash flow statement shows how the inventory was financed. In the first nine months of 2026, inventories used $2,321.7 million of cash and accounts receivable used $1,125.0 million, while accounts payable, accrued liabilities, provisions and taxes payable provided $3,590.5 million. Net cash from operations was $1,156.9 million, compared with $408.9 million in the same period of 2025. Put differently, suppliers and other payables funded more than the combined increase in inventories and receivables, which totaled $3,446.7 million (computed).

Capital spending rose too. Celestica's purchases of property, plant and equipment, net of sales proceeds, were $744.4 million in the first nine months, against $106.5 million a year earlier, about 7.0 times as much (computed). Free cash flow, a non-GAAP measure defined as cash from operations less those purchases, was $412.5 million, up 36.4% from $302.4 million (computed).

The equity offering is the third source. Celestica completed a public offering of 11.1 million common shares on August 7, 2026, and the cash flow statement shows $3,391.3 million of net proceeds from it. Shares outstanding at period end were 126.1 million, compared with 115.0 million a year earlier.

How Corning describes its funding

Corning's release gives fewer balance-sheet details, but it describes the approach in words. Chief Financial Officer Ed Schlesinger said the company has "steadily added capacity, backed by long-term customer agreements that share the cost and risk of expansions." Chief Executive Officer Wendell P. Weeks said the company invested "more than half a billion in capital expenditures to address demand" in the quarter while generating adjusted free cash flow of $661 million.

Corning's third-quarter GAAP operating cash flow was $1.06 billion, the release said, which compares with the $389.7 million Celestica generated from operations in the same quarter; the two figures reflect companies of different size and are not a measure of efficiency. Through the first nine months of 2026, Corning said adjusted free cash flow was $2.27 billion "while investing to meet demand." The company said it secured four long-term, multibillion-dollar customer agreements in the third quarter, including with Verizon and AT&T. The release does not give the terms of those agreements, so how much cost they share is not shown in the data.

What the filings do not show

The documents do not say whether one approach is better, and they do not show why Celestica chose an equity offering while Corning did not announce one in its release. Celestica's own explanation for its lower cash-flow outlook is narrower: it cut its 2026 free cash flow outlook to $460 million from $600 million, which it said was "primarily driven by targeted working capital investments to support the accelerating growth in 2027."

The scale of the planned expansion is also stated. Celestica's 2027 outlook is revenue of $40.0 billion, up 90% from its 2026 outlook of $21.0 billion, with capital expenditures of between $1.5 billion and $2.0 billion. That range is about 2.0 to 2.7 times the $744.4 million spent in the first nine months of 2026 (computed). Corning's long-range plan, which it calls Springboard, targets doubling its annualized sales run rate from $20 billion to $40 billion by the end of 2030, according to Schlesinger.

For readers following the sector, an earlier FinanceInTime analysis of AI infrastructure demand covered where demand appears in company filings. This piece concerns the other side, how suppliers pay to meet it.

What to watch

Both companies tie their plans to continued customer demand. Celestica said its 2028 customer demand forecasts are "meaningfully higher" than its 2027 revenue outlook, and Corning guided fourth-quarter core sales to $5.2 billion to $5.3 billion. Each company's next quarterly filing will show whether inventories, payables and capital spending kept moving in step with sales. Corning's quarterly report on Form 10-Q, which carries a full balance sheet, is the next document that would let readers compare the two on the same basis; this release does not give its date.