As companies in the flat-screen television business struggle to maintain profit, Corning, the US company that supplies most of the specialist glass for these products, has looked on with satisfied detachment.

Corning’s shares have more than doubled in value over the past three years and outperformed the S&P 500 by 58 per cent, driven by investor interest in its near-60 per cent share of the market for supplying the high-tech glass that goes into liquid crystal display televisions – the most popular type of flat-screen sets.