Agilent Technologies: 4 Different Insiders Have Sold Shares This Month

In this article, I will feature one tech stock that has seen intensive insider selling during the last 30 days. Intensive insider selling can be defined by the following three criteria:

1. The stock was sold by three or more insiders within one month.


2. The stock was not purchased by any insiders in the month of intensive selling.


3. At least two sellers decreased their holdings by more than 10%.

Agilent Technologies (A) provides bio-analytical and electronic measurement solutions and services to the life sciences, chemical analysis, diagnostics and genomics, communications, and electronics industries worldwide.

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Insider selling during the last 30 days

Here is a table of Agilent's insider-trading activity during the last 30 days by insider.

Name	Title	Trade Date	Shares Sold	Rule 10b5-1	Current Ownership	Decrease In Ownership
Fred Strohmeier	SVP	Dec 23	4,935	No	25,824 shares	16.0%
Didier Hirsch	CFO	Dec 18	25,539	No	59,425 shares	30.1%
Guy Sene	SVP	Dec 10	5,716	No	33,938 shares	14.4%
Jean Halloran	SVP	Dec 5-6	55,127	No	75,544 shares	42.2%

There have been 91,317 shares sold by insiders during the last 30 days. More details about the Rule 10b5-1 trading plan can be found from this link.

Insider selling by calendar month

Here is a table of Agilent's insider-trading activity by calendar month.

Month	Insider selling / shares	Insider buying / shares
December 2013	91,317	0
November 2013	167,911	0
October 2013	0	0
September 2013	266,469	0
August 2013	0	0
July 2013	0	0
June 2013	43,253	0
May 2013	18,331	0
April 2013	0	0
March 2013	73,943	0
February 2013	0	0
January 2013	10,558	0

There have been 671,782 shares sold, and there have been zero shares purchased by insiders this year.

Financials

Agilent reported the fiscal 2013 full-year, which ended October 31, financial results on November 14 with the following highlights:

Revenue	$6.8 billion
Net income	$724 million
Cash	$2.7 billion
Debt	$2.7 billion

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(Source: November presentation)

Outlook

Agilent's guidance is as follows:

	Q1/2014	FY2014
Revenue	$1.68-$1.70 billion	$6.95-$7.15 billion
EPS	$0.65-$0.67	$3.03-$3.33

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(Source: November presentation)

Agilent expects completion of separation into two publicly traded companies by early November 2014.

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(Source: November presentation)

Competition

Agilent's competitors include Danaher (DHR), Teradyne (TER), and Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO). Here is a table comparing these companies.

Company A DHR TER TMO Market Cap: 19.07B 53.63B 3.31B 39.85B Employees: 20,600 63,000 3,600 38,900 Qtrly Rev Growth (yoy): -0.03 0.06 -0.07 0.03 Revenue: 6.78B 18.83B 1.39B 12.88B Gross Margin: 0.52 0.52 0.56 0.42 EBITDA: 1.39B 4.23B 307.02M 2.73B Operating Margin: 0.15 0.18 0.12 0.13 Net Income: 724.00M 2.54B 126.06M 1.32B EPS: 2.10 3.58 0.54 3.59 P/E: 27.36 21.50 32.32 30.69 PEG (5 yr expected): 1.86 1.98 2.13 N/A P/S: 2.80 2.84 2.39 3.07

Agilent has the second-weakest revenue growth among these four companies.

Here is a table of these competitors' insider-trading activities this year.

Company	Insider buying / shares	Insider selling / shares
DHR	0	1,275,950
TER	0	407,753
TMO	0	507,764

Only Agilent has seen intensive insider selling during the last 30 days.

Conclusion

There have been four different insiders selling Agilent, and there have not been any insiders buying Agilent during the last 30 days. All four of these insiders decreased their holdings by more than 10%. Agilent has an insider ownership of 0.30%.

Before entering short Agilent, I would like to get a bearish confirmation from the Point and Figure chart. The two main reasons for the proposed short entry are weak revenue growth, and the intensive insider-selling activity.

Source: Agilent Technologies: 4 Different Insiders Have Sold Shares This Month

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. (More...)

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