Morgan Stanley indicated that the $6 billion optical fiber supply agreement signed between Corning (GLW.US) and Meta (META.US), which will provide fiber optic products for the latter's data centers, is expected to significantly boost Corning's optical communications business. Buoyed by the positive news of this partnership, Corning's stock price surged over 16% on Tuesday. The company is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter financial results before the U.S. market opens on January 28th. Morgan Stanley analyst Meta Marshall wrote in a research note to clients, "We had previously anticipated that the stock could see upward movement if an announcement was made ahead of the earnings release. While we initially expected that any announcement might more explicitly disclose the timeline for capacity expansion investments, the scale of this $6 billion agreement between Corning and Meta—valid until 2030 and covering optical fiber, cables, and connectivity products—holds significant importance across all potential markets, encompassing capacity expansion, horizontal diversification, and cross-domain expansion, with horizontal diversification being the core focus." Marshall assigned an "Equal-Weight" rating to Corning with a price target of $98. She stated that as focus on power consumption issues continues to intensify, deploying fiber optics closer to compute units becomes crucial, and fiber optics are precisely suited to meet the demands for high density and massive scalability. Furthermore, this partnership is also expected to drive further expansion of Corning's optical communications business, which currently contributes approximately 40% of the company's total revenue. She added in the report, "Corning revealed that Meta is not currently its largest customer in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, but following this agreement, Meta will become the top customer in that field. We had not previously anticipated that Corning would raise its performance targets for 'Project Springboard' in the Q4 earnings—due to supply constraints, the company had maintained its target of a 30% compound annual growth rate for its enterprise optical communications business from 2023-2027. However, with the finalization of this agreement with Meta, we now see a greater possibility of that target being increased."