Agilent Loss Widens on Tax Charge

Agilent Technologies Inc., a money-losing maker of test equipment, said Monday that it had a wider fiscal third-quarter loss as it cut costs and wrote off deferred tax assets. Its shares rose after Agilent said it would break even or have a profit in the current period.

The loss was $1.56 billion, or $3.28 a share, compared with $228 million, or 49 cents, a year earlier, the company said. Sales in the quarter ended July 31 rose 8% to $1.5 billion from $1.39 billion.

Agilent, which posted its seventh consecutive loss this quarter, said it trimmed almost $100 million in structural costs as it sold some operations and its worldwide workforce dropped by 2,400.

Agilent said that, excluding some costs, it would break even or have profit of as much as 10 cents a share on sales of $1.5 billion to $1.6 billion in its fourth quarter.

“It’s a significant improvement that we feel we can build on in the future,” said Chief Executive Ned Barnholt in a conference call with analysts. “I remain confident in our ability to become profitable.”

Analysts expect fourth-quarter profit of 3 cents a share on sales of $1.56 billion, according to a poll by Thomson First Call.

Shares of Palo Alto-based Agilent rose as much as $2.35, or 10%, to $24.81 in extended trading after the report. The stock had closed up 68 cents to $22.46 on the New York Stock Exchange. The shares have risen 25% this year.

Agilent took a $1.4-billion noncash charge to write down the value of tax credits, used to reduce the tax burden on future profit, to conform with accounting rules.

Excluding those and other costs, Agilent would have had a loss of 2 cents a share, beating the 7-cent loss expected on average by analysts polled by Thomson First Call.

In May, the company forecast that in the third quarter, excluding some costs, earnings would be between break-even and a loss of 10 cents a share on revenue of $1.45 billion to $1.55 billion.

Revenue in the test and measurement division, the company’s biggest unit, rose 18% to $613 million from $521 million a year earlier.

Cash and equivalents were $1.4 billion, down from $1.53 billion in April.

Third-quarter orders rose to $1.47 billion from $1.46 billion in the same period a year earlier, Agilent said.