AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES INC. $36 (New York symbol A; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 346.0 million; Market cap: $12.5 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.3; No dividends paid; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.agilent.com) makes testing systems that help improve electronic products, such as cellphones and networking equipment.
In May 2010, Agilent bought Varian Inc. for $1.5 billion. Varian makes a wide range of medical and drug-testing equipment, such as mass spectrometers that detect and measure substances in blood and other samples. Medical-equipment demand is less cyclical than testing products, so this move cuts Agilent’s risk.
Thanks to Varian, Agilent earned $706 million, or $2.00 a share, in the year ended October 31, 2010. That’s up 152.1% from $280 million, or $0.80 a share, in fiscal 2009. These figures exclude costs to integrate the new operations. Revenue rose 21.5%, to $5.4 billion from $4.5 billion. The company spends around 11% of its revenue on research.
Agilent had to borrow the money it needed to buy Varian. That pushed its total debt up to $3.7 billion, from $2.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2009. Despite the rise, Agilent’s debt is still a moderate 30% of its market cap. The company also holds cash of $4.2 billion, or $12.14 a share.
Agilent should earn $2.44 a share in fiscal 2011. The stock trades at 14.8 times that figure. That’s a low p/e ratio in light of the new products that should result from its research spending.
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Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
The Successful Investor Inc. and its affiliate Successful Investor Wealth Management (referred to hereafter as TSI Network) know that you care how information about you is used and shared, and we appreciate your trust that we will do so carefully and sensibly. This notice describes our privacy policy. By visiting websites owned by or associated with TSI Network, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy.
This privacy policy is applicable to all TSI Network Visitors, Clients, Employees, Suppliers, Web sites, Management, and all other interested parties. Any links to or from our site are not covered by this policy. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of every site that you visit.
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We do not collect or disclose personal information, except when it is provided to us voluntarily by the site/store visitor with their consent.
We store subscriber and password files containing personal information securely. These files are stored in secure areas that are not accessible to the general public. We are always working to ensure the security of your personal information.
We are continuously in the process of improving our sites and services. If any new features or policies require a change to this current policy, we will post a clear notice of this change on pages of our site where the privacy policy appears. The principle behind this privacy policy is to collect information with your knowledge and consent.
What personal information do we collect?
The information we receive from customers helps us personalize and continually improve your online experience at TSI Network. TSI Network may collect personal information online for all legal purposes, which include, but are not limited to:
Information You Give Us: We receive and store any information you enter on our website or give us in any other way through sign-up forms or ordering forms for publications and services. You can choose not to provide certain information, but then you might not be able to take advantage of many of our services and features. We use the information that you provide for such purposes as responding to your requests, customizing your web browsing experience for you, improving our website, and communicating with you.
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Information from Other Sources: For reasons such as improving personalization of our service (for example, providing better product recommendations or special offers that we think will interest you), we might receive information about you from other sources and add it to our account information. We also sometimes receive updated delivery and address information from our shippers or other sources so that we can correct our records and deliver your next purchase or communication more easily.
We do reserve the right, however, to collect and perform statistical analyses of the internet traffic to our website for our internal use. However, information collected does not allow us to identify any individual, and will not collect any personal information of the visitor. Furthermore, we do not sell, rent or loan to any outside parties the information collected and analyzed.
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Does TSI Network Use the Information It Receives?
"Contact Us" and Comment Features: TSI Network encourages visitors to its websites to contact us with questions and comments. Email addresses and other information of persons using these features may be collected in order to facilitate our responses to those inquiries.
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Changes to this Policy
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TSI Network may revise this Policy from time to time.
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