Now Agilent is ready to profit

Article Excerpt

Agilent was a unit of Hewlett-Packard until 1999, when Hewlett set it up as a separate company and handed it out to its investors as a special dividend or spinoff. The company has since gone through a lot of changes. In 2005, it sold its struggling chip-making operations. In 2006, it spun off Verigy Ltd., its computer-chip-testing business. Meanwhile, it has gone through two major restructurings in the past four years. All this has helped Agilent cut its costs. This will spur its long-term earnings and cut its risk. It is also acquiring a medical-testing products firm to expand in that business, and this helps cut its dependence on the highly cyclical electronics industry. AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES INC. $30 (New York symbol A; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 346.0 million; Market cap: $10.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.3; WSSF Rating: Average) makes testing systems that help improve the quality of electronic products, such as cellphones, set-top boxes and high-speed Internet…