Corning
Q2 2022 Earnings Call
Jul 26, 2022, 8:30 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Welcome to the Corning Incorporated quarter 2 2022 earnings call. [Operator instructions]. It is my pleasure to introduce to you, Ann Nicholson, vice president of investor relations.
Ann Nicholson -- Vice President, Investor Relations
Thank you, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to Corning's Q2 2022 earnings call. With me today are Wendell Weeks, chairman and chief executive officer; Ed Schlesinger, executive vice president and chief financial officer; and Jeff Evenson, executive vice president and chief strategy officer. I'd like to remind you that today's remarks contain forward-looking statements that followed in the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
These statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. These factors are detailed in the company's financial reports. You should also note that we will be discussing our consolidated results using core performance measures, unless we specifically indicate our comments relate to GAAP data. Our core performance measures are non-GAAP measures used by management to analyze the business.
For the second quarter, the largest difference between GAAP and core results stems from nonmarket noncash mark-to-market gains associated with the company's currency hedging contracts. This increased GAAP earnings in Q2 by $203 million. To be clear, this mark-to-market accounting has no impact on our cash flow. A reconciliation of core results to the comparable GAAP value can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website at corning.com.
You may also access core results on our website with downloadable financials in the Interactive Analyst Center. Supporting slides are being shown live on our webcast. They're also available on our website for downloading. And now I'll turn the call over to Wendell.
Wendell Weeks -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Ann, and good morning, everyone. Today, we announced strong second quarter results. We captured additional content opportunities across our markets despite an extremely challenging external environment, and we delivered on growing demand in optical and solar. Sales were $3.8 billion, up 7% year over year; and EPS was $0.57, up 8% year over year.
Free cash flow was $440 million, and total first-half free cash flow was $611 million. Gross margin and operating margin expanded 90 basis points and 120 basis points, respectively, from the first quarter 2022 levels. Now our improved profitability was primarily driven by the benefits of pricing actions that we took to more appropriately share the impact of inflation with our customers. In total, we delivered in line with our expectations even though dynamics in three of our largest markets played out at the lower end of our assumptions.