Dive Brief:
- Agilent Technologies will lay off 3% of its employees in response to continued sluggish demand in the market for laboratory equipment, a company spokesperson told MedTech Dive.
- “Agilent is reducing its workforce by 3 percent across operations and regions to adjust to the pace of recovery in the market and to reinvest in areas of strategic importance, including biopharma,” spokesperson Sarah Litton said in an email.
- The company plans no facilities closings in the latest action, Litton added. The job losses follow a 2% workforce reduction Agilent disclosed in December that affected about 400 employees and involved site closures in unspecified locations as part of a broader restructuring.
Dive Insight:
The lab equipment industry has struggled to recover from a slowdown in orders in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Agilent continues to expect improvement in equipment replacement cycles in the second half of the year and a recovery in 2025, but momentum has been slower than anticipated, company executives said on an earnings call in late May.
“We have responded quickly to the lower market growth expectations and are taking difficult but necessary actions to streamline our cost structure,” Agilent CEO Padraig McDonnell, who took the reins as chief executive in May, said on the call.
Agilent’s revenue fell 8.4% year over year to $1.57 billion in its fiscal second quarter, which ended on April 30. The Santa Clara, California-based company lowered its full-year outlook due to the slower market recovery.
The new round of job reductions includes a total of 184 employees based at Agilent facilities in Santa Clara, San Diego, Folsom and Carpinteria, California, according to a June 7 Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filing with the state. The largest number of cuts – 156 – are in Santa Clara.
In the letter to California’s Employment Development Department, Agilent said it plans to reorganize various business units, resulting in the elimination of positions. Agilent said the layoffs are expected to begin on Aug. 9.
