Agilent Technologies Inc (NYSE:A) recently reported its first quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.
Cost Control
Jon Groberg – Macquarie Securities: So obviously a lot of questions to go through here. So I will let others hop in. But I guess very big picture on some of your last comments, Didier around cost control. Can you maybe just, given the fact that things seem to be a little bit slower and I guess you are not anticipating them getting much better even though some macro indicators actually suggests like things could get better in the second half. Can you maybe just walk us through exactly what you’re doing on the costs side and maybe why you are not being a little bit more aggressive?
William P. Sullivan – President and CEO: Let me make that comment Jon if you don’t mind for Didier the details. Fundamentally I’m actually more optimistic than I was last quarter. As you know I have tended to be somewhat pessimistic. If you look at where some of our growth opportunities are, the introduction of our new products, there is actually signs that things are going to get better. So I believe that not continuing to expand in emerging markets, not continuing our R&D investments, not continuing in our reach, is just a bad strategy moving forward right now. As result of that, Ron and Didier put together a detailed plan of ensuring not only are we going to drive $40 million of manufacturing cost out and this is the first time we’ve announced the quantity of that, that we are in the process of eliminating our temporary workforce, managing all non-customer and non-new product introductions. If you go back to the 2009 downturn, which is quite severe, where we in fact were making 17% operating profit, we were able to take substantial amount of money out of the system. So we are aggressively implementing that moving forward. Our guidance policy has been the same at this point in time. The forecast for the rest of the year is $7.1 billion of revenue and $3 a share, that’s our outlook. But we are widening the downside because of the continued volatility that we are seeing that – over that we’ve seen over the last four quarters.
Jon Groberg – Macquarie Securities: So just maybe on those cost savings that you just announced, maybe just give us a little better sense of kind of how long it will take and when we will start to see those in the numbers, I mean those are immediate, eliminating the temporary workforce, I guess, but maybe some of the manufacturing cost out and some of the other savings initiatives, when should those start to – when should we start to see the full impact of those?
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