GLW: Piper Ups to Buy Following Analyst Day

Shares of Corning (GLW) are up 14 cents, or 1%, at $13.72 in early trading following the company’s investor meeting in New York on Friday.

The stock received one upgrade this morning, that I can see, from Piper Jaffray’s Jagadish Iyer, who raised his rating on the stock to Overweight from Neutral, and raised his price target to $16 from $13, writing that Corning will resume earnings growth next year, perhaps seeing 19% growth, to $1.60 per share, up from perhaps $1.35 this year.

Iyer raised his revenue estimate to $8.05 billion this calendar year, up from a prior $7.4 billion, and above the $8.03 billion consensus. For 2013, he sees the company making $9.09 billion in revenue, up from $8.25 billion previously, and above the consensus $8.74 billion.

Iyer also expects the company to be “more aggressive in its buyback, given its completion of 50% of its authorized $1.5 billion buyback.” The company has $3.4 billion in net cash and is “generating substantial free cash flow,” writes Iyer. He thinks perhaps the company will reduce diluted share count by 100 million (currently 1.52 billion shares outstanding), which would add 5 cents per share to calendar 2013 earnings.