NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Agilent Technologies said after the close of the market on Monday that revenues for its fiscal fourth quarter were $1.04 billion, essentially flat compared to Q4 FY 2014 and matching the consensus Wall Street estimate.
Its Life Sciences and Applied Markets segment recorded $515 million in revenues in the quarter, down 4 percent from $539 million a year ago. Its Diagnostics and Genomics revenues were up 4 percent to $178 million from $172 million in Q4 FY 2014. Revenues from the company’s CrossLab group were up 3 percent to $342 million from $332 million in the year-ago period.
Agilent's profit for Q4 FY 2015 rose to $140 million, or $.42 per share, from $23 million, or $.07 per share, a year ago. On an adjusted basis, its EPS was $.50, beating the consensus Wall Street estimate of $.47.
Agilent had intangible amortization of $37 million, transformation costs of $15 million, acquisition and integration costs of $7 million, asset impairments of $3 million, and a tax benefit of $39 million. The company had R&D costs of $82 million in the quarter, down 15 percent from $97 million a year ago. Its SG&A spending fell 5 percent to $297 million from $312 million.
The company noted in a statement that its Life Sciences and Applied Markets Group saw a strong quarter for pharma offset by weakness in the industrial and academic and government markets. The company’s Diagnostics and Genomics Group and CrossLab Group both saw solid growth broadly.
On a conference call following the release of the results, Patrick Kaltenback, president of Agilent’s Life Sciences and Applied Markets Group, noted that the strength in pharma was reflected in solid sales of liquid chromatography instrumentation, including several large deals during the quarter with big US and European drugmakers.
Kaltenback also cited the biopharma space as a significant growth driver, adding that the company had targeted this market with certain of its LC and mass spec instruments.
Agilent also saw strong growth in its companion diagnostics business, said Jacob Thaysen, president of the company’s Diagnostics and Genomics Group. During the quarter Agilent received US Food and Drug Administration approval for two new companion diagnostics: one, a test for determining if patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer are likely responders to Merck’s PD-1 inhibitor Keytruda (pembrolizumab); and a second developed with Bristol-Myers Squibb for determining PD-L1 expression levels on the surface of NSCLC tumor cells to provide information on the survival benefit of treatment with BMS’s Opdivo (nivolumab).
For full-year Fiscal 2015, Agilent said that revenues were nearly flat at $4.04 billion compared to $4.05 billion in FY 2014 and matched the average analyst estimate.
The firm's net income for the year fell to $398 million, or $1.19 per share, compared to $504 million, or $1.49 per share, in FY 2014. Adjusted EPS was $1.74, beating the consensus Wall Street estimate of $1.70.
Agilent’s R&D spending fell 8 percent during the year to $330 million from $358 million in FY 2014. Its SG&A spending was down 1 percent to $1.19 billion from $1.20 billion a year ago.
The company gave Q1 FY 2016 revenue guidance of $1.0 billion to $1.02 billion, and non-GAAP earnings guidance of $.42 to $.44 per share. For the full fiscal year 2016, it gave guidance of $4.15 billion to $4.17 billion in revenue and non-GAAP earnings of $1.85 to $1.91 per share.
President and CEO Mike McMullen said the guidance assumed low single-digit growth in government and academic sales and high single-digit growth in the pharma and diagnostic and clinical markets.
In Tuesday morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Agilent shares were up 2 percent at $37.98.