Life sciences tools company Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A) will be announcing earnings results tomorrow after market close. Here’s what you need to know.
Agilent beat analysts’ revenue expectations by 1.8% last quarter, reporting revenues of $1.70 billion, flat year on year. It was a slower quarter for the company, with a miss of analysts’ full-year EPS guidance estimates and organic revenue in line with analysts’ estimates.
Is Agilent a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free.
This quarter, analysts are expecting Agilent’s revenue to be flat year on year at $1.67 billion, improving from the 5.6% decrease it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $1.27 per share.
Analysts covering the company have generally reconfirmed their estimates over the last 30 days, suggesting they anticipate the business to stay the course heading into earnings. Agilent has only missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates once over the last two years, exceeding top-line expectations by 1.8% on average.
Looking at Agilent’s peers in the research tools & consumables segment, some have already reported their Q4 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Bio-Techne delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 9%, beating analysts’ expectations by 4.2%, and Mettler-Toledo reported revenues up 11.8%, topping estimates by 3.6%. Bio-Techne traded up 3.3% following the results while Mettler-Toledo was also up 2.8%.
Read our full analysis of Bio-Techne’s results here and Mettler-Toledo’s results here.
Valuation multiples for many growth stocks have not yet reverted to their early 2021 highs, but the market has been optimistic as of late due to a soft landing. This is an economic situation where rate hikes successfully quelled inflation but did not send the economy into a recession. Furthermore, recent rate cuts and Donald Trump's triumph in the 2024 Presidential election have been tailwinds for the market, and while some of the research tools & consumables stocks have shown solid performance, the group has generally underperformed, with share prices down 5.4% on average over the last month. Agilent is down 10.4% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $152.56 (compared to the current share price of $135.28).
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, it should be obvious by now that generative AI is going to have a huge impact on how large corporations do business. While Nvidia and AMD are trading close to all-time highs, we prefer a lesser-known (but still profitable) semiconductor stock benefiting from the rise of AI. Click here to access our free report on our favorite semiconductor growth story.
