Agilent's Q4 results

Fiber Optics Weekly Update, Nov 22, 2002

Agilent reported orders of $1.50 billion and net revenue of $1.74 billion for the quarter ended Oct. 31, 2002. On an operating earnings-before-goodwill (EBG) basis, the company lost $2 million, or $0.00 per share. This compares with prior company expectations of an EBG loss of $0.10 to breakeven per share on revenues of $1.60 to $1.70 billion. After $92 million of non-cash goodwill and amortization charges and $256 million of restructuring expenses, the net fourth quarter GAAP loss was $236 million, or $0.51 per share.

"Our fourth quarter breakeven performance demonstrates that our drive to restore Agilent to financial health is succeeding," said Ned Barnholt, Agilent president and chief executive officer. "I'm gratified by these results, which are at the top end of our expectations, and I couldn't be more proud of our Agilent employees who made this happen. These results demonstrate that the disruptions in the third quarter from the implementation of our new company-wide ERP system are behind us."

"We achieved about $1.2 billion of annualized savings from our prior restructuring programs and finished the year with a normalized quarterly breakeven cost structure of about $1.65 billion," Barnholt said. "However, as we indicated three months ago, the wireline telecom markets are continuing to decline and a recovery in that market is not expected for some time. We have also seen at least a pause in the recovery of the semiconductor and associated semiconductor capital equipment markets. In August we announced we would initiate additional actions in the fourth quarter to further reduce structural costs while ensuring we protect those programs critical to future growth."

As a result, in the fourth quarter the company accrued about $133 million of cash restructuring expenses and took asset impairment charges of about $123 million. Agilent expects additional charges of about $20 million in the first quarter. The savings from these steps should drive Agilent's breakeven below $1.6 billion by the middle of 2003. Looking ahead, the company expects business to remain difficult. First quarter revenue is expected to be in the range of $1.5 billion to $1.6 billion. Including the $0.07 impact of Agilent's ERP and CRM systems implementations, the company expects operating EBG in the range of a $0.05 to $0.15 loss.