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