William P. Sullivan
Analyst
Besides praying, let me just share with you, the situation. So we deal with thousands of customers every quarter. The top 25 customers purchased in Q1 $275 million, that's an average of $11 million a customer. 80% of the delivery changes came from these 25 customers. And again, Agilent historically has had very liberal delivery policies moving forward, we work with our customers, they have their own set of issues, and so you can see -- and again, we had this quarter nailed on January 16 when I spoke to the Board of Directors. And all of a sudden, someone says, "Hey, look, I can't take the delivery for X, Y or Z reason," and you're sort of stuck. And you can't invoice and so you can't recognize revenue. Even the late orders, our manufacturing team did a great job turning the orders, got them in the pipeline, but we just couldn't recognize revenue based on, as you know, very, very tight revenue recognition rules. So I wish I could say something magical, I think it would be a bad mistake not to work with our customers, I mean they have their own set of issues. But in this environment, which is a slower growth environment, any change out of one of these big customers can become a surprise. And it's happened 2 out of the last 4, and the flip side of it is, to the other 2 quarters, we've been over guidance as you know, quite substantially. So I think as long as that we're in a slower growth environment, around flat, we're going to have more volatility. The answer, of course is, is to get back into our operating model of 4% -- low-end of our operating model of 4% organic growth rate, and I think that the signal noise ratio will just become lower. But I -- right now, unfortunately, there is not a magic answer right now, just given how concentrated the surprise has been in 2 of the last 4 quarters. The good news is, these orders aren't getting canceled. I mean, this is not a 2001, 2009 where all heck broke out and people are canceling orders. This is just strictly the issue of your assumptions to the end of the quarter. Didier said we are a highly capitalized capital equipment company. A lot of the revenue goes out the last month of the quarter, and over the years, it's been predictable. The last 4 quarters, is not, we have not done a good job predicting.