Diamonds and Dogs

9/17/19

Airlines rebound with the drop in oil. American Airlines (AAL) is up 3% as the price of oil pulls back 5% as Saudi Arabia expects normal capacity back on line by the end of September. It's a year to forget for American and most airliners dealing with replacing all their Boeing 737 MAX planes with other planes to keep customers flying. A couple weeks ago the airliners had to cancel numerous flights due to Hurricane Dorian and yesterday the price of oil had its biggest spike in history. Afraid to ask what else could go wrong for the airliners.

Corning (GLW) glass is a little foggy. Corning is down 8% after lowering third quarter guidance for two divisions. Their optical communications sales will now decline by 3% to 5% for the year, compared with its previous forecast of a low-to-mid-single digit percentage increase. The miss is largely attributable to lower capital spending by several major carriers on cable deployments and fiber-to-the-home projects. In display technologies, Corning continues to expect third-quarter prices to be sequentially flat, and full-year glass prices to decline by a low-to-mid single-digit percentage. The soft sales projections are primarily based on lower-than-expected utilization levels by several panel manufacturing customers driven by conservative buying patterns by set makers. Corning is expecting the softness to be temporary. Let's hope they are right.