Keysight Technologies makes Wall Street debut (w/video)

As hundreds of employees at its Santa Rosa headquarters raised glasses of champagne and sparkling cider in a celebratory toast, Keysight Technologies made its Wall Street debut on Monday and embarked upon its new life as an independent company.

Ron Nersesian, president and CEO of what is now the world’s largest electronic measurement company, rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Monday morning to start the first day of trading for Keysight shares. The executive was surrounded by more than a dozen Keysight employees from around the world who spent the past year working to separate the business from parent company Agilent Technologies.

In Santa Rosa, an estimated 750 workers gathered in the afternoon to toast “a new beginning,” Keysight spokesman Jeff Weber said. The Santa Rosa employees received commemorative name badges and glasses, the latter engraved with the phrase: “This is our time!”

“I think that’s something that we’ll all remember for a long time,” Weber said.

With annual sales of $2.9 billion, Keysight is the largest company ever based in Sonoma County. It develops and manufactures electronic measurement devices for the aerospace, communication and semiconductor industries, selling its products in more than 100 countries.

Keysight employs 9,700 employees at 12 facilities worldwide, including about 1,250 workers in Santa Rosa at its headquarters off Fountaingrove Parkway.

The Santa Rosa facility opened four decades ago as part of Silicon Valley pioneer Hewlett-Packard. When HP split itself into two companies in 1999, the local campus became part of Agilent.

“Today marks a major milestone for Keysight as we begin the next phase of our journey,” Nersesian said Monday in a statement. “As an independent company, the top opportunities within the electronic measurement market are now the top opportunities for Keysight. With a 75-year heritage of market and technology leadership and our strong business model, we look forward to delivering superior value to our customers and shareholders.”

Before the split, both Agilent officials and stock analysts maintained that the company’s stock price was devalued because shareholders were forced to invest in two very different types of companies: the electronic measurement business, now part of Keysight, and a life science business that remains under Agilent.

As a result of the split, existing Agilent stockholders were given one share of Keysight for every two shares of Agilent. The company’s stock trades under the ticker symbol KEYS.

More than 9 million shares, amounting to 5 percent of its stock, changed hands Monday on the New York Stock Exchange. The volume suggests that a significant number of Agilent shareholders want to divest from the electronic measurement business, said Paul Knight, an analyst in New York with Janney Montgomery Scott. Such trading should help further the goal of both Agilent and Keysight officials to acquire “a more focused set of shareholders,” he said.

Keysight shares closed Monday at $31.15, dropping ?35 cents a share, or 1 percent, from the closing price of shares sold conditionally Friday in preliminary “when-issued” trading. The company’s market capitalization was valued Monday at $5.2 billion.

Agilent shares rose to $40.84, up $1.31 on the New York Stock Exchange. More than 4.5 million shares traded hands, the heaviest volume in two weeks.

Keysight will report its year-end earnings on Nov. 17. Both Nersesian and analysts have said the company’s top challenge is to increase revenues, and that will be one area of focus that day, Knight said. But analysts also will be watching for any indication of whether sales are growing or declining for the larger technology industry.

As such, “they’ll be a lot of focus on bookings as well,” Knight said. Keysight is expected to report the total dollar volume of new product bookings that likely will result in future sales. Company officials also may provide an indication of whether sales are growing or shrinking in such sectors as communication, aerospace and semiconductors, he said.

On Monday morning, Nersesian was accompanied by more than a dozen employees from various facilities, including India, Malaysia, Europe and Santa Rosa. The employees were selected for their work on the project to turn Keysight into an independent company and to make a statement that “we’re appreciative of all the hard work that our employees do,” Nersesian said in an interview last month.

While the company is now operating independently from Agilent, it still has many changeover tasks to complete, including revisions to approximately 8,000 product photos that need to say “Keysight,” according to Hamish Gray, the company’s chief of staff and the manager in charge of the split from Agilent.

“Product rebranding will go on for a long time,” Gray said last week.

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit.