Nope. BTW, Agilent also missed by a penny and warned, note in particular the language in bold-face:
biz.yahoo.com
Regarding its performance in the second half of fiscal 2001, the company said that several factors make it likely that revenue in the third quarter would be lower than in Q2: the extremely uncertain business climate, the steep order decline in the second quarter and the fact that the company shipped a substantial portion of its backlog during Q2. The company currently expects third-quarter revenue to be as low as $2 billion. While it is very difficult to predict revenue, and volume has a very significant impact on earnings, Agilent expects to report a third-quarter loss, on an earnings before goodwill basis, of between 20 and 30 cents per share -- including about 5 cents per share for restructuring.
``While accurate predictions are extremely difficult, we feel we are at or near bottom and may see an improvement in orders later in the second half,'' said Barnholt. ``We are continuing to work aggressively on short-term expense controls and cost reductions. We hope to return to modest profitability in the fourth quarter of our fiscal year, which ends Oct. 31, depending on the rate of order improvement.''
Second-quarter orders in Agilent's test and measurement business reflect significant weakness in capital spending for equipment used to test wireless and optical products, and a major drop in order levels in semiconductor test equipment. Order drop-off is primarily related to excess capacity in manufacturing for many large customers in these markets.
Q2 orders in the company's semiconductor products business reflect very weak demand in wireless and networking components as customers work through high inventory levels.
Let's see...orders are weak, the backlog is gone, but we're "at the bottom???" Maybe he meant "slapped a bottom", in the Jumper sense of the word...<G>
BTW, does anyone know when the next book-to-bill numbers are out...should be quite interesting, considering that CEO's have "seen more bottoms" than a bus terminal toilet seat this quarter. |
