Collecting Insights from Corning, Kimberly-Clark and Coca-Cola

Tuesday morning was a busy one for earnings conference calls, and it’s going to be that way for the rest of this week and next week as well.

In addition to the holdings we have reporting, like Waste Management (WM) and Welltower (WELL) after Tuesday's market close and multiple tech holdings after Wednesday's market close, we’ll be chewing through those calls and transcripts. What we’re looking for are fresh insights and data points we can use to refresh our thinking, be it for the Portfolio’s holdings, a specific end market, the economy or other headwinds and tailwinds we need to pay attention to.

Corning

We’ll start with Corning (GLW) , given our earlier comments on Tuesday, and while management did dig a little deeper compared to its earnings press release, it was understandably tight-lipped ahead of its 2026 Investor Day on May 6 at the New York Stock Exchange. What was said about the Optimal Communications segment, however, was positive both in terms of the $6 billion, multi-year agreement with Meta (META) and the revelation that it inked two similar deals with other hyperscalers during Q1 2026.

Corning did not name those companies, sharing that it was on them to announce the deal when they are ready. However, when Corning updates its guidance through 2030 next week, more should be revealed.

How much of this is tied to existing hyperscaler capex plans, and how much is new spending, is something we’ll dig into once the hyperscalers have reported this week, and we have Corning’s May 6 comments in hand.

At a minimum, this should be positive for our positions in Arista Networks (ANET) , Marvell (MRVL) , Broadcom (AVGO) and Nvidia (NVDA) .

Kimberly Clark

Two things stood out to us from Kimberly-Clark’s (KMB) earnings call.

First, for the current quarter, it sees about $50 million in “inflationary impacts” as a result of what’s transpired in the Middle East. While the company did not give formal guidance for the full year, the team shared that if oil prices remain around $100 per barrel on average in 2H 2026, it would face incremental input costs between $150 million and $170 million. The team clarified that is not built into its current outlook.

The second item is that the team’s three areas of focus are Baby Care, Women’s Health and Active Aging. This sounds like the company is looking to tap our Aging of the Population theme, and with its focus on adult incontinence, we would agree. We’ll need to see how it tackles this and other aspects of the aging population, but near-term, our gut is this won’t be a big driver of revenue and profits. It is, however, something we will want to keep tabs on.

Coca-Cola

When we think about the Middle East conflict, higher petrochemical prices and supply chain-related issues, and throw Coca-Cola (KO) into the mix, aluminum and PET bottles are what we think about. Coke’s management conceded that those items are more of an issue for its bottling partners like Coca-Cola Consolidated (COKE) .

KO’s management team shared that it is seeing commodity pressure in the tea and coffee space, and that is expected to “continue somewhat throughout the year.” That’s a timely setup for quarterly results from Starbucks (SBUX) after Tuesday's closing bell.

KO also shared that it will continue to address consumer cost pressure, especially for low-income consumers, and that it is “dialing up our affordability options to get closer to them.”

That could mean a more promotional environment ahead, and that is something to watch for that could have implications for PepsiCo’s (PEP) beverage business as well as those at Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) and National Beverage Corp. (FIZZ) .

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro was long ANET, AVGO, MRVL and NVDA shares.