Agilent sees growing revenues

Agilent sees growing revenues

SINGAPORE: U.S.-based tech giant Agilent Technologies said Tuesday it expects 40 percent of its total revenues to come from Asia by 2005, cushioning sluggish sales in the U.S. and European markets.

The Nasdaq-listed firm is also planning to transplant more of its manufacturing operations from the United States to the region to lower its operating costs, chairman and chief executive Ned Barnholt said.

"Asia is continuing to grow while other parts of the world are flat to declining," he said, adding the company is seeing "very good growth" in China and South Korea.

Agilent currently gets slightly more than 30 percent of its revenues from Asia.

Barholt, who was here to mark the opening of the firm's US$92 million plant in Singapore, said revenues from the city-state had grown 40 percent in the past two years.

Asia was the bright spot for the technology equipment maker as sales orders in the region rose seven percent in the first quarter to January while in the Americas it fell 22 percent and in Europe sales were flat. --AFP