November launch date for Agilent T&M spin-off

8th January 2014

Keysight Technologies (formerly Agilent)

Mick Elliott

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Keysight Technologies, the electronic measurement spin-off from Agilent Technologies will become a separate company in November this year. Keysight will officially come into existence from August 1 this year. It will trade as a subsidiary of Agilent for one quarter in order to demonstrate a quarter of earnings for the New York Stock Exchange.

In November it will float as a separate company, the launch share prices for both Agilent and Keysight to be determined by the value of the companies at that time.

Agilent’s $2.68bn cash reserves will be shared between the two companies in a split to be decided later this year.

In a conference call this afternoon Chris Rennie who will become UK managing director of the new company unveiled a new red logo in the shape of a waveform.

The name Keysight Technologies was chosen from an original list of 4,000 possibles. “It has been chosen to convey the ability to see what others cannot, offering the critical or key insights to understand and unlock the changing technology landscape,” said Rennie. “The new tagline ‘unlocking measurement insights for 75 years,’ is a reference to the company’s origins in Hewlett-Packard which was founded in 1939,” he added.

He confirmed that the Winnersh facility will continue to be the UK headquarters for the new company while the Edinburgh site will be divided between Keysight and Agilent.

The two companies’ pure research facilities will be split.

“In effect this has already happened as our Technology Leadership organisation has been working separately at our Santa Rosa headquarters for the past two years,” Rennie explained. Keysight will own the IP rights to products developed at Santa Rosa, notably in custom semiconductor devices. Where necessary it will license the technology to Agilent.

The core message from Rennie was the new company’s ability to focus completely on electronic measurement market. Both employees who were briefed on the changes on January 7 and key customers have been enthusiastic about the change according to Rennie.

“There will be no changes to the electronic measurement product portfolio,” said Rennie.

The three year guarantee will continue with the new company.

Agilent Technologies announced last year that it would separate the Electronic Measurements business and its Life Sciences business. In 2013 Electronic Measurement revenues were $2.9bn. Life Sciences revenues were $3.9bn