Agilent Technologies (Palo Alto, CA) is laying off nine percent of its workforce - about 4,000 employees - after unveiling a $219.0 million third-quarter net loss.
The company stated that the loss was equivalent to $0.48 per share, and contrasted with a profit of $155.0 million, $0.34 per share, in the same period a year ago. Fueling the bad news was a drop in revenue to $1.8 billion from $2.4 billion.
Pointing out that the company had already been paring costs, including a temporary 10-percent pay cut, CEO Ned Barnholt said "The measures to date have had a positive impact, but the business environment in our key industries continued to deteriorate this quarter. And the outlook going forward is for a slow and gradual recovery. This is by far the worst industry downturn I've seen in my 34 years with the company. Extraordinary business conditions, unfortunately, require unusual actions."
