By Josh Nathan-Kazis

Shares of Agilent Technologies were climbing late Wednesday after the lab tools and testing company reported better financial results than expected for the second quarter of its fiscal year.

Agilent's peers have been buffeted by the Trump administration's disruptions to funding for U.S. academic labs. Those labs are an important customer for the companies that make high-end instruments used in scientific research.

On an investor call late Wednesday, however, Agilent CEO Padraig McDonnell said that the company hadn't been significantly affected.

"Academia and government declined only 2% in the quarter, better than expected performance in the U.S. and globally," McDonnell said. "Given that we were ahead of others talking about potential U.S. funding impacts in our first quarter earnings call, and did better than expected in Q2, we feel we already have adequately captured any variability looking forward."

The stock was up 6% after hours.

McDonnell also said the company believes it can mitigate "most of the impact" of the new U.S. tariff regime in its 2025 fiscal year, and can "fully mitigate" the effects in 2026, by diversifying the company's supply chain, implementing "strategic pricing," and other measures.

Agilent's revenue was were $1.7 billion in the second quarter, up 6% on a reported basis, while the consensus forecast among analysts tracked by FactSet was for $1.6 billion. Non-GAAP earnings were $1.31 a share, better than the consensus call of $1.26.

The company raised its forecast of full-year revenue to between $6.73 billion and $6.81 billion, from a prior call of between $6.68 billion and $6.76 billion. Analysts were expecting sales of $6.73 billion.

Management maintained an earlier forecast that non-GAAP earnings per share will be between $5.54 and $5.61.

Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at josh.nathan-kazis@barrons.com

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May 28, 2025 17:32 ET (21:32 GMT)

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