Much of Agilent's risk management, and future investment, rests in product and geographic diversification.
Agilent reported non-GAAP profits of 79 cents a share, falling short of the Street at 83 cents.
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"Hewlett-Packard spun off Agilent, but this turned out to be shortsighted, " he says.
Other competitors in the technology sector include: Waters (WAT), Harvard Bioscience, Inc. (HBIO), and Agilent Technologies (A).
Agilent Technologies (A) reports its third quarter earnings on Wednesday, August 15, 2012.
Agilent has already moved much of its chemical analysis business to China, which is Agilent's second-largest market for those products.
Reddoch notes that Agilent doesn't disclose its DNA chip sales, but he estimates it has a mere 10% of the market.
Compounding the problem, Agilent inherited all of HP's computer systems to run its business--without the revenue needed to justify so much diversity.
The information was sent to Agilent Technologies Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif.
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Rather than a strictly health care company, Agilent develops measurement technology used in chemical analysis, life sciences, diagnostics and genomics and electronic measurement.
Besides the reductions, Vanguard also added Agilent Technologies ( A) to its portfolio, and increased its shares in Teva Pharmaceutical Industries ( TEVA).
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Hilliard Terry , director of investor relations for Agilent Technologies (nyse: A - news - people ) in Palo Alto, Calif.
Using a device made by Agilent Technologies, he selected only for the genes that coded for proteins on the X chromosomes of each person.
In semiconductors, where Agilent competes with Teradyne (nyse: TER - news - people ), among others, "you'll see more emerging competitors, " he says.
Analysts are expecting Agilent to report earnings of 83 cents per share, up 7.8% from a year ago when it reported earnings of 77 cents per share.
One factor that could be contributing to the rise: a bullish analyst meeting yesterday by Agilent (A), which has a small business that makes network test equipment.
This week, analysts are also looking for earnings growth from Agilent Technologies (NYSE: A), Autodesk (NASDAQ: ADSK), NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) and NetEast.com (NASDAQ: NTES).
While HP got all the attention as a legacy Valley company in the midst of dramatic change, Agilent, considered the soul of the old HP, had the real turmoil.
Analysts are projecting Agilent to come in with earnings of 80 cents per share, 4.8% less than a year ago when it reported earnings of 84 cents per share.
Analysts are projecting Agilent to come in with earnings of 66 cents per share, 4.3% less than a year ago when it reported earnings of 69 cents per share.
Rosetta's technology allows Merck to print its own chips, or to license them from Agilent (nyse: A - news - people ), which sells Rosetta's expression arrays to other clients.
"There's been no lack of distraction in the last four years, " says Sullivan, who was previously Agilent's (nyse: A - news - people ) executive vice president and chief operating officer.
Today, Agilent has a dozen or so, and has also reduced headcount to 28, 000 from 44, 000, offshoring and outsourcing so much of its business that it eliminated 5 million square feet of office space.
The company's initial dominance of its market continues--Agilent tests 70% of the world's cell phones, and competitors like Japan's Enrisu and Techtronix (nyse: TEK - news - people ) are a fraction of Agilent's size.
After splitting off from Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ) in 1999, Agilent's businesses in electronics and life sciences measurement equipment, plus semiconductors, bulked up at the tail end of the tech bubble, then crashed when the manufacturers that were the mainstay of the measurement gear business cancelled orders pell-mell.
So for chip designers around the world--from Hewlett-Packard's (nyse: HWP - news - people) Agilent (nyse: A - news - people) spinoff to Toshiba, Kodak (nyse: EK - news - people) and Motorola (nyse: MOT - news - people)--the race is on to make it possible.
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