Agilent to cut 600 jobs as sales drop

<p>Agilent Technologies, Sonoma County’s largest tech employer, will lay off 600 employees across its global operations over the next eight months as it grapples with a sharp drop in orders, the company said Tuesday. </p><p>It’s unclear how the job cuts will affect Santa Rosa, where Agilent has 1,350 employees. The Santa Clara-based company has more than 19,000 workers worldwide. </p><p>“We don’t know the details yet, but it’s likely there will be some impact here,” said Jeff Weber, spokesman for Agilent’s Santa Rosa unit. </p><p>Orders for electronic measurement products plunged 28 percent in the first quarter ended Jan. 31 as manufacturers and telecommunications providers slashed spending. </p><p>“The economic downturn was even more ferocious than we anticipated,” said Adrian Dillon, Agilent’s chief financial officer. </p><p>Agilent expects business will remain slow over the next quarter, although “forecasting in the current environment is almost futile,” Dillon said. </p><p>The company’s Electronic Measurement Group, which includes Santa Rosa, posted $596million in first-quarter sales, down 23 percent from the same period a year ago. Its Santa Rosa-based Wireless Business Unit makes instruments for testing most of the world’s cell phones.</p><p>The layoffs announced Tuesday will affect Agilent’s global support staff, including finance, human services, legal services and information technology.</p><p>They will occur through the end of October, Dillon said. </p><p>Agilent also is closing two small businesses in its semiconductor test division, which does not include Santa Rosa. </p><p>The cost-cutting measures are expected to save $150 million, Agilent CEO Bill Sullivan told Wall Street analysts Tuesday.</p><p>They follow earlier actions including a hiring freeze, pay cuts, outsourcing of some manufacturing, elimination of most temporary jobs and a two-week shutdown in December. </p><p>Last year, Agilent also announced plans to cut 500 jobs, although none of them were in Santa Rosa. Together with the 600 cuts announced Tuesday, Agilent will shed about 6 percent of its work force. </p><p>“We don’t know where, or when, this recession will bottom,” Sullivan said Tuesday. “We’ve been taking aggressive action to manage the company during this downturn.” </p><p>Agilent’s companywide revenue fell to $1.17billion, down 16 percent from a year ago. Net profit tumbled to $64 million or 18 cents per share, down 47 percent from the first quarter of 2008. </p><p>The company will continue launching new products to keep its lead in the test and measurement market, Sullivan said. </p><p>Agilent’s newest network analyzer — a device developed in Santa Rosa — has been named “product of the year” by a trade publication, the company said. </p><p>The instrument will make it easier for engineers to create advanced wireless networks for radar, satellite, cell phone and military communications networks, said Greg Peters, vice president and general manager of Agilent’s component test division in Santa Rosa. </p><p>“This opens up whole new avenues for our customers,” he said.</p>