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Agilent cuts work force
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August 14, 2000: 9:46 a.m. ET
Company to save $80M by slashing jobs in health-care division
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Agilent Technologies Inc. said Monday it will trim its health-care division work force by 450 jobs in a move that is expected to save the beleaguered firm as much as $80 million.
The company's Healthcare Solutions Group will further reduce its staff of 5,000 by cutting another 200 contract employees. Additional cost-cutting measures include moving its manufacturing operations from plants in Andover, Mass.; Qingdao, China; and Boeblingen, Germany, to its Singapore production facility.
"We feel confident that these actions will bring our costs in line with revenue and enable us to strengthen our leadership in our core business," Steve Rusckowski, a senior vice president in the company's health-care division, said.
Agilent (A: Research, Estimates) said the employee cuts will be completed by the end of October and it expects to take a one-time charge of $25 million in the fourth quarter related to the reduction.
"We're taking these actions to return our health-care solutions business to profitability as quickly as possible," Agilent President and CEO Ned Barnholt, said.
Agilent, a spinoff of Hewlett-Packard (HWP: Research, Estimates), ran into trouble last month when it warned that it expected to miss Wall Street's third-quarter earnings estimate of 35 cents a share because of parts shortages in its patient monitoring equipment unit.
 The news sent Agilent shares plunging 25 percent, after it said it now expects to post earnings of between 18 cents and 22 cents a share when it reports third-quarter results Thursday.
"The business's current financial performance is clearly unacceptable and we don't intend to wait for market conditions to improve before implementing our plans," Barnholt said. 
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Agilent Technologies
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