Keysight Technologies quarterly earnings up 8 percent from last year

Two weeks after making its public debut on Wall Street, Santa Rosa’s Keysight Technologies reported Monday that its quarterly revenues increased 8 percent from a year ago.

Keysight, the largest company ever based in Sonoma County, reported revenues of $762 million in fourth-quarter results for its fiscal year ending Oct. 31.

The earnings came while the electronic measurement company was a subsidiary of Agilent Technologies. Keysight split off from Agilent on Nov. 1, and two days later its top executive rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange during the company’s first day of public trading.

President/CEO Ron Nersesian said Monday in a statement that employees had “delivered another quarter of solid financial results while launching Keysight as an independent public company.”

Keysight stock Monday increased 1.1 percent to $31.05.

The day included an earnings call with stock analysts that was streamed over the Internet from the new company’s headquarters off Fountaingrove Parkway.

“It was our first conference call from Santa Rosa,” Senior Vice President Guy Séné said in interview.

Keysight is the world’s largest electronic measurement company. Tracing its roots back to tech pioneer Hewlett-Packard, it employs 9,500 workers, operates 12 research and development centers around the world, and does business in more than 100 countries.

For the year, the company’s revenues grew 2 percent to $2.93 billion.

In contrast, the electronics measurement industry typically grows at an annual rate of 3 to 4 percent, officials said.

Officials said the new company will focus on increasing revenues.

“This is definitely our top priority,” Séné said. “We have been behind the market growth,” in part because under Agilent, revenues from the electronic measurement division were used to help grow that company’s life science business.

Nersesian cautioned analysts against expecting the company to make up all its lost ground in 2015.

“We believe it’s going to take us a couple of years to get back to the market rate of growth,” he said.

As part of that effort, Keysight plans to increase its investment in research and development next year to 13 percent of revenues, compared to 12 percent last year. That would amount to an increase of about $29 million, or 8 percent.

The company expects orders for the next quarter to range between $675 million and $715 million. The midpoint of that range would amount to a 3.6 percent increase over a year earlier.

By sector, quarterly revenues increased 10 percent in aerospace/defense, 6 percent in communications and 9 percent in industrial/computers/semiconductors.

During the quarter, the company released several new products that were developed in Santa Rosa, Séné said. They include: a new device for testing small base stations for mobile phones; a signal analyzer that can be installed into new custom-built “modular” testing units; and a new “exploration library” software package for researchers developing the next generation “5G” wireless technology.