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Agilent Technologies, Inc. (A)

Q3 2007 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 14, 2007

$114.83

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Agilent Technologies 2007 third quarter earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the presentation over to Director of Investor Relations, Mr. Rodney Gonsalves. Please proceed, sir.

Rodney Gonsalves

Management

Thank you and welcome to Agilent's third quarter conference call for FY 2007. With me are Agilent’s President and CEO, Bill Sullivan; and EVP of Finance and CFO Adrian Dillon. After my introductory comments, Bill will give his perspective on the quarter and the business environment. Adrian will follow with a review of the financials and the performance of each of the businesses. After Adrian's comments, we will open the lines and take your questions. In case you haven't had a chance to review our press release, you can find it on our website at www.investor.Agilent.com. We are also providing further information to supplement today's discussion. After you log on to our webcast module from our website, you can click on the link for supplemental information. You will find additional information such as our end market revenue breakout and historical financial information for Agilent's continuing operations. In accordance with SEC regulation G, if during this conference call we use any non-GAAP financial measure you will find on our website the required reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure. In addition, I would like to remind you we may make forward-looking statements about the future financial performance of the company that involves risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties could cause Agilent's results to differ materially from management's current expectations. We encourage you to look at the company's most recent filings with the SEC to get a more complete picture of all the factors at work. The forward-looking statements, including guidance, provided during today's call are only valid as of this date and the company assumes no obligation to update such statements as we move through the current quarter. Lastly and before I turn the call over to Bill, I would like to remind you we will host our…

Rodney Gonsalves

Management

Thanks, Adrian. Operator, I'd like you to go ahead and give instructions for the Q&A.

Operator

Operator

Your first question comes from John Harmon - Needham & Co. John Harmon - Needham & Co.: I would like to summarize in the electronic test business, excluding Japan, the weakness was derived from consolidation by contract manufacturers, and in Japan specifically was a handset test?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

No. The situation in Japan is quite frankly the biggest surprise is across the board. If you look at the top 25 customers in Japan they were down universally around 25% so there clearly was a pause in orders in Japan starting to last week of June. Our forecast for Q4 in Japan is a sequential increase in orders. The issue is that we don't think we will have enough time to convert those orders to revenue. In terms of the rest of Asia, we are seeing some consolidation in contract manufacturing environment, essentially a little bit of overcapacity, so as a result of that it's put a damper on what has been a very strong growth in Asia. John Harmon - Needham & Co.: I came across an article today that said you had sold one of your businesses, the OSS business you acquired before. Is that correct and does that mean you were downsizing your OSS business?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

We had been very open we have had issues in our monitoring business moving forward. We did divest a portion of that business. We are focusing the organization to ensure we get back to profitability and then from there to capitalize on opportunities in this whole Internet protocol market environment. John Harmon - Needham & Co.: But you're still staying in the business?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

That is correct.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Deane Dray - Goldman Sachs. Deane Dray - Goldman Sachs: Bill, did hear you correct that you said the weakness in Japan started in the last week of June?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

That is correct. Deane Dray - Goldman Sachs: So you saw it still carried through July and August? What's been the early read in the past couple of weeks?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

As I had said, Deane, Japan is a very large market for us in electronic measurements, over $500 million. We saw the weakness in Q3. Our team believes that there will be a sequential recovery in Q4 and the start of August would suggest that. But again, it's very early. Deane Dray - Goldman Sachs: What are you baking into your guidance for the fiscal fourth quarter in terms of order recovery?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

Typically because of the weak orders in Q3, we have earned $60 million of backlog. Historically our orders tend to be back loaded in the quarter. As a result of that, we are forecasting a relatively normal turn which is slightly over 50% in a quarter and also of course the analysis and the backlog that we have going into the quarter. Deane Dray - Goldman Sachs: Is there anything seasonal that you're expecting different for the fourth quarter?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

From our historical strength in orders in Q4? Deane Dray - Goldman Sachs: Yes.

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

We are not expecting anything different at this time. Deane Dray - Goldman Sachs: Both you and Adrian commented on the beginnings of a turnaround in the wireless manufacturing test. Now it was sequentially up 11%. Anything beyond the excess capacity getting absorbed?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

No. Just one of the situations I mentioned last quarter given the difficulty in that environment and the pressure of the organization that we believe that we are hitting the bottom. I personally believe the industry is going to continue to restructure. More and more companies are looking at cell phones as consumer-based devices. There is going to be a movement to eliminate what's called processing. Essentially today every cell phone actually makes a phone call before it is shipped. Given how predictable the chipsets have been, the designs of the cell phone, you are going to continue to see pressure to eliminate the cost of tests given the competitive nature of cell phone manufacturing. Even though in the traditional business we have seen, we are seeing it phase out, I believe this industry will continue to evolve to look like a far more consumer-based industry where there will continue to be less and less tests. Deane Dray - Goldman Sachs: Last question, on the wireless test side, do you feel you have lost any market share in this downturn?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

In terms of that, as I said, we have no fundamental evidence we have lost major market share. That is a very, very competitive environment in parts of Asia. We continue to be committed to the operating model that we have set to the company. Again, we continue to have very, very competitive offerings. As call processing is eliminated from test, we believe we will have very effective test capability moving forward.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Ajit Pai - Thomas Weisel Partners. Ajit Pai - Thomas Weisel: Looking at things from a slightly macro perspective, you talked about the weakness in Asia with the contract manufacturers; you talked about Japan seeing weakness that you are expecting to come back sequentially. When you look at the two markets where you saw strength, in the United States and also in Europe, you are watching somewhat of a credit crisis over there right now. What gives you confidence when you talk about next year? You said it's too early to talk about next year, but you did mention that you expect things to return to more normalized trends. Watching things get worse in the two strongest markets you have and no signs that things in Asia and Japan are getting better, so what gives you that confidence?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

Again, I will comment on this. We are not predicting what the overall world economy is going to be in '08. If in fact events materialize a negative position due to credit and gas and all the other things that people are concerned about, Agilent will be impacted moving forward. If we continue to have existing the economic environment that we do today, and the investments that we are making as a company, particularly given the growth in our analytical measurement, we believe we are going to be well-positioned for '08.

Adrian Dillon

Analyst

Just to put a little bit of nuance on that as well. I think one thing that Asia and Japan do have in common is they are both more consumer-based and more semi-based. That's clearly where the weakness is. One of the things that Agilent has done, among others, is to become less consumer electronics dependent. If you look at the mix of our businesses, certainly the chemical analysis and life sciences, but even the vast majority of general purpose, is really not directly consumer electronics based. I think we were actually much less sensitive to those than we used to be. But there is no question that it's a volatile environment out there which is why we are being conservative about it. Ajit Pai - Thomas Weisel: Just looking at the $1.37 billion that you spent in budgeting your own shares. Can you give us idea as to what is the average price paid for those shares and also the $630 million you have left, do you intend to be fairly opportunistic or do you intend to finish off gradually over the quarter?

Adrian Dillon

Analyst

To answer your second one, we've always taken the opportunity to feather a little bit but don't try to be too cute about it either. It's getting the shares and the money back in the hands of the owners. The average price in the program today has been just over $32. Ajit Pai - Thomas Weisel: The last question will be the growth opportunities that you talked about, especially in the low cost instrumentation side and electronic measurement, both in the handset side and modular instrumentation. Can you give us some color as to what kind of progress you made over there? How material those businesses have become and are the friends you were expecting in those businesses, particularly the indirect distribution channel playing out the way you expect it? If they haven't, what's been different?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

Well, if you look at our electronic measurements, our businesses continue to be dominated by our wireless segment of the business. It's by far large, in fact it's almost as large as all of our analytical businesses. That is the core part of our business. In fact, it continues to do quite well. So from a material standpoint, our movement into lower cost instruments, data acquisition is still a relatively small part of our overall business and it's going to take multiple years to get to something is that truly measurable given how large our wireless business is. Order growth again was in double-digits moving forward and this quarter we were planning a whole range of additional product introductions.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Mark Moskowitz - JP Morgan. Mark Moskowitz - JP Morgan: I want to see if we can shift gears in looking at the Bio-analytical side of the business. It seems as if you are enjoying some pretty good tailwinds from the general market but also from your broader product set. Can you contextualize the GC and the GCMS product introductions in terms of how much legs are still left this those ongoing ramps and what has been the competitive response so far?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

The strength of our analytical business continues to be in our instrumentation both in the GC and LC. That has been our work horse. We have a very, very strong market position and over the last year we have completely turned over these platforms. We added additional features to the LC called rapid resolution so that scientists and researchers can get their answer faster, just as we introduced in Q2 our whole new GC family. We continue to leverage what is a strong market with very, very competitive instrumentation. Coupled with that, we made the announcement last year that we were going to enter into the high performance mass spectroscopy market. We have done that with our triple quad and time of flight and we continue to get very, very good leverage inside of that market. Again, the tide has come in. If you look at our competitors, their businesses are also doing very, very well. We were pleased that we are outperforming the market by a few points. Mark Moskowitz - JP Morgan: How much of that uptake is because of the tide coming in versus Agilent's improved product specs? It seems you folks have really made great strides in terms of addressing some of the customer needs out there in terms of higher throughput and higher capabilities. Let's say the tide recedes here down the road, could there still be opportunity for Agilent to actually improve its market share position?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

We continue to grow our instrument business faster than the market by definition. We will have taken market share in terms of our LCMS where we had essentially a zero market share in the high performance mass spectroscopy, that clearly is either a market share gain or our product offerings expanding the application of the market and the overall market is expanding itself. I am very, very pleased with the progress we are making in our core instrumentation. As Adrian hade noted, our Stratagene acquisition is going very, very well. We see an enormous amount of synergies of not only their business as a standalone reagent business, but to really be able to couple the reagent business with our instrument business to give really value-added work flow solutions for our customers. Again, we are focused to continue to play out the hand that we have and I'm very confident in the future, again assuming all the normal economic conditions. Mark Moskowitz - JP Morgan: You mentioned the Stratagene integration going better than expected. I know it's still early, but can you give us some color behind the cross-selling opportunities in terms how you are going to market now with the reagents and the instrument business?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

Step one, of course, is to make sure that their business continues as is and we continue to leverage that. One of the problems in every acquisition is that it's easy to get caught up in the internal workings of integration and you lose the sight of your end customers. So today from an order perspective we are very, very pleased they are able to keep their momentum going even through what obviously will be some distraction as we get integrated in. The second or phase two of this is that we have gotten our technical teams together through our central research lab, the instrument business and strategy team to really identify opportunities, particularly focused in the genomics area where we can really make a differentiation in the marketplace. So we are systematically identifying areas where we can provide a differentiable solution and then we'll invest in those moving forward. The third part of this which would also be more longer term, Stratagene has a very strong presence in the academic and research environment where our market share is actually relatively low as we tend to sell the big pharma and big biotech companies and of course all the rest of the chemical related industries. So we will be back building their channel with instruments expertise so that we can do a better job of penetrating the instrument part of the academic and government research marketplace. Mark Moskowitz - JP Morgan: If we can move back into EMG. I was curious in terms of the government recapitalization wave. I know it moves pretty slow at a glacial speed. Where are we in terms of what Agilent will need to do to be a major player? Will there be a requirement for more bolt-on acquisitions as we have seen in recent days to move forward in this recapitalization wave?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

I think there are going to be three parts to this. First is the normal capitalization that goes on being in the demands of the government, mostly Department of Defense. Again, as being the largest RF microwave instrument manufacturer in the world, we are in a very strong position as we provide more instrumentation to support electronic warfare, all of the maintenance and support, what it takes to keep the various Armed Services operating, so that's the primary one and that's ongoing. We have said in the past the U.S. Army is one of our top ten customers over the last year. We are well positioned there given the breadth of our products and the quality and contribution we have. Secondly which we have talk in the past there is an effort to try to simplify instrumentation as we move forward. It's called synthetic instrumentation that has been delayed given the funds that have been diverted to the war but there is still a commitment to do that and we continue to work with that moving forward. The third area and one that we have been quite pleased with is in the whole surveillance area and this is not only signal intelligence, this is not only the Department of Defense but also Homeland Security, the acquisition of Accuris, our data converters, ADD converters has been going very, very well. We just made an announcement of an acquisition yesterday of a company that gives us more capability in this whole signal intelligence area. That part of our business is going exceedingly well. As we move forward in the whole area of Homeland Security and signal intelligence I believe we have a lot of opportunities for Agilent to make a contribution. Mark Moskowitz - JP Morgan: Can you help us understand how 3G phones as that traction continues to gain in the momentum it seems, how these smarter phones could impact the cost of tests? Is there any opportunity to reset the downward curve there from the cost of test perspective?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

I've been very clear in the past that the markets are bifurcating as you get new subscribers in developing countries it's going to be a lot more pressure on the cost of phone and cost of service. In the developed countries it's about functionality, more bandwidth to these mobile devices As you get into more complicated standards, the cost of tests will be higher. Again, that initially happens on every new technology innovation and over time people try figure out how to get the cost of test out. But as we move into these next generation high bandwidth data transmission, I believe there is going to be a real opportunity for us not only in manufacturing, again, but in our efforts into research and development. The research and development market for the next generation of phone is at least twice as big as the wireless manufacturing. As Adrian alluded to, if you look at Agilent as being a diversified measurement company, we are doing everything possible to try to take out the volatility we had in the company. Obviously the divestiture of the semiconductor-related business was step one. The second part was making sure we have a very broad spectrum of measurements of tools across a broad industry to take out some of the volatility. If you just look at this quarter alone, 21% of the company now is in chemical analysis versus 25% in communications. That's just an indication as we continue to grow through investment and other measurements opportunities that we can in fact be even more diverse and stable as we have in the past.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Dave Eagan - Lehman Brothers. Dave Egan - Lehman Brothers: In the same vein about some of the new market opportunities that you are going after, could you describe just how you think that the weakness that you are seeing now is affecting some of your growth opportunities? For instance, the low cost instruments that if I remember correctly, that was going after some of the contract manufacturers.

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

Actually, the low cost instrumentation is a billion dollar segment in the market. Actually the largest market in the world is in the U.S. and these are light manufacturers. These are out of factory applications. They are in academic applications. Again, I wouldn't think that handhold devices are particularly large investment in contract manufacturers. There they are investing in optical inspection and x-ray inspection and in line testing and final test. The variable model and again Adrian talked a little bit about that, has allowed us to ensure that the system is able to quickly re-adjust our expenses so even though revenue is at the low end of range, we were mid range in terms of our earnings per share. We are continually focusing on investing in these growth opportunities. Again, even though we had a surprise in Japan starting in the quarter, we are surely not going to take the eye off the ball, change our investment strategy because we have enormous opportunities and our job is to create shareholder value over time and not just direct the company around a quarter.

Adrian Dillon

Analyst

We have talked many times, Dave, about the variable pay that we have which ties directly the employees variable compensation to the performance of the business, as well as the pay for results, as we call it, the six-month bonus plan for the top 800 people that ties their bonuses directly to targets for ROIC and profitable growth; not just any growth but it must be profitable growth. Those two in combination plus tight expense control do give us a lot more variability and scalability than we had in the past. Obviously it's not perfect but it does help us keep focus on those new markets, those new instruments, those new products and customers so we can stay focused on the bigger prize of leveraging that operating model when these markets inevitably do come back. Dave Egan - Lehman Brothers: You can lower the cost structure as needed so that you can continue to get the bottom line improvement wherever the revenues are. Two, this is kind of what I was asking about more so, do you still feel like in the near term in addition to the long-term that you're going to see the growth in these new market opportunities and is the weakness perhaps in more of the core existing businesses that you have been servicing for awhile?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

There is no indication in my mind that the investments and the places we have investments, their overall potential has changed whatsoever based on the performance of Q3. Again, what we saw was across the board slowing of orders in Japan and in Asia had to be related to the overall contract and manufacturing capacity and cell phones. That's a relatively small part of the overall market. As I mentioned before, if you look at our wireless business, the business was very healthy and they had good year-over-year growth both in orders and revenue. I believe that the growth initiatives that we invested on are absolutely the right ones and we will continue to execute on those.

Adrian Dillon

Analyst

I think you are on to something on the margin. It's clearly part of our strategy which is we will continue to evolve in the direction where we can create the most differentiation and generate the most contribution and profits and that's clearly in some of the areas such as gradually away from the manufacturing side of handset tests and more into the R&D side of handset tests. I would use the example of our new one box tester for WiMax of R&D applications as an example this quarter of our ability to do that and do that profitably. Dave Egan - Lehman Brothers: In terms of if we look at where your revenues end up by segment, where your electronic measurement will be in the low single-digits and your bio-analytical will be high double-digits, there was an earlier question about how far we are into your growth opportunity for bio-analytical. I know you guys have clearly indicated in the past this is a multi-year opportunity. But in terms of us thinking about where perhaps the revenues may be next year, is it likely that if we don't go into a recession, let's make that a caveat, that the electronic measurement will see faster growth off a weaker base next year and that the bio-analytical may see some slower growth based upon a more difficult compare?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

I think that given the very substantial growth on the analytical side one could imagine that growth will damper so much because of the compares. I think from a macro perspective our growth in the company will continue to come from the analytical side. On the electronic measurement we will continue to see growth in R&D, aerospace and defense and some with communication, and I believe we will continue to be pressure volatility on the manufacturing segment of our business.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Richard Eastman - Robert W. Baird. Richard Eastman - Robert W. Baird: Japan, the order growth, the 24% decline in orders, can you just go through this one more time? Within the EM business, was the decline greater in general purpose or communications? If you just look at the two pieces.

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

The number one decline was semiconductor related that was on parametric tests. We had a very good revenue quarter in parametric test. We have done very, very well in there. The orders in Japan percentage-wise was the greater. In terms of scopes and sources, business was good. Otherwise, across the board business has decreased as I said, across the top 25 customers. Richard Eastman - Robert W. Baird: In terms of the shifting of nanotech revenue, is there any change in strategy there? Is there a focus more on the bio-analytical side of that development effort and sales effort? Or is that just for convenience sake?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

What's been interesting since the acquisition of Molecular Imaging and our continued understanding of the market that over half of the market is really on the life science side. To balance out the management bandwidth in the company and couple this is an investment that demonstrates the synergy capabilities between the world of photons and electrons and the world of molecules, that it just made a lot of sense to realign it with the analytical business. Richard Eastman - Robert W. Baird: Adrian, how should we think about this share count for the fourth quarter? When you gave adjusted EPS guidance, what kind of number are you using there?

Adrian Dillon

Analyst

Down 5 million or 6 million.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of William Stein - Credit Suisse. William Stein - Credit Suisse: I want to address something in the wireless market. Bill, I think you said before that the wireless R&D market is twice as big as the wireless manufacturing market. Did I hear you correctly?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

That is correct and that's our belief. William Stein - Credit Suisse: I think this is the first quarter that wireless R&D was a larger portion of your sales then wireless manufacturing. Assuming that's right, is this a shift that we should expect to see extend over time and wondering if you could also talk about the operating profit margin differential between these two segments?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

We don't particularly speak of profit margins between segments but you are absolutely right. Our wireless R&D was 8% of the company; wireless manufacturing was 7% of the company. I think as I mentioned before, the whole wireless test is going to continue to go through change. With the elimination of call processing, I think the total cost of test go down, capital investment of test will go down and that change just like it is happening every consumer product that has ever been manufactured to my knowledge, that you are going to see a smaller capital investment for wireless manufacturing test. The flip side of it is that there are just numerous wireless standards in the world today trying to get more bandwidth on what is obviously a quite difficult frequency and as a result of that I believe that we do have opportunities in LCE and inside of WiMax and WCDMA and we have enormous opportunity to provide R&D solutions and then make sure that we have a very cost competitive, high throughput wireless manufacturing capability for our customers. William Stein - Credit Suisse: The idea is not to try to exit the market that is getting somewhat more commoditized. It's to attack both segments with different solutions, is that fair to say?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

I think you will see much simpler solutions on testing cell phones as we move forward and we have the capability to provide that solution. William Stein - Credit Suisse: Wondering if we can get the exposure to Japan overall for the company?

Bill Sullivan

Analyst

Japanese business is $500 million of our total business. It's quite substantial. Again, a very large segment of our electronics measure.

Adrian Dillon

Analyst

Before we go to the next question, let me correct something I said a little earlier as far as share count. We were assuming in the fourth quarter that our average share count will be down closer to 10 million, not the 5 million to 6 million that I indicated.

Operator

Operator

At this time we have no more questions in queue, sir. I would now like to turn the call back to Mr. Gonsalves for closing remarks. Rodney Gonsalves : Thank you. To everyone on the line, I want to thank you on behalf of the management team for joining us today. We look forward to seeing everybody in Delaware on September 13 for our bio-analytical measurement investor forum. Thank you very much.