Latest news with #Hewlett-Packard
ITV News
03-06-2025
- Health
- ITV News
Mike Lynch colleague Stephen Chamberlain hit by car while running, which he took up after fraud case
A businessman who died after being hit by a car while out running had taken up the sport after he was charged with fraud in the US alongside a tech billionaire, an inquest has heard. Stephen Chamberlain, 52, died from a "traumatic head injury" at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge three days after being hit on the A1123 in Stretham, Cambridgeshire, in August 2024. He was an associate of tech tycoon Mike Lynch, who died just days beforehand when his superyacht, the Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily. Mr Chamberlain was crossing a road between two parts of a bridleway when he was struck by a car that had crested a humpback bridge. In a statement to the inquest, his daughter Ella described her father as the "perfect role model in every way", while his son Teddy said he showed mental and physical strength "beyond anything I could imagine" and he was "so proud to be his son". Mr Chamberlain's widow Karen Chamberlain said in a statement that her husband had taken up running after he was charged with fraud. Mr Chamberlain was the co-defendant in Mr Lynch's US trial, and both were cleared last year of conducting a massive fraud over the sale of software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. HP acquired the Cambridge-based company, which Mr Lynch founded in 1996, for £8.35bn but later wrote down the value by £6.68bn and asked the US justice department to investigate fraud. Mr Chamberlain was a former vice-president of finance at Autonomy and was accused of artificially inflating its revenues and making false and misleading statements to auditors, analysts and regulators in 2018. Both he and Mr Lynch were found not guilty in June 2024 after a trial in San Francisco, California. "He discovered it [running] helped him mentally stay calm and focus on what was ahead," Mrs Chamberlain said in a statement read by a lawyer. Her husband would "meticulously spend hours planning his routes" and competed in ultra-distance races. He was "safety conscious" and only wore one earbud while he ran, which was the case on the day he was hit, she said. She added that on the day of the crash, Mr Chamberlain had planned to run 17 miles, starting in Ely and ending in Longstanton, Cambridgeshire, and was just over six miles in when the crash happened. The coroner directed on Tuesday that the female driver of the car should not be named. In a statement summarised by area coroner Caroline Jones, she said that she saw Mr Chamberlain looking to his left, away from her, only looking to his right just before the collision, adding she "braked hard" and steered away but the front offside of the car collided with him. Grahame Cornwall, a motorbike rider who witnessed the collision, said in a statement that Mr Chamberlain was thrown "approximately 15 feet" in the air and added he did not believe the driver would have seen anything until she was on top of the rise of the bridge. PC Ian Masters said it was "not an ideal crossing point by any stretch of the imagination" and said it was his view that the crash was "not an avoidable collision". The coroner concluded Mr Chamberlain died as the result of a road traffic collision, and said she shared the family's concerns that the humpback bridge is an "irredeemable barrier" to visibility for pedestrians and other road users. She said she would write to Cambridgeshire County Council to request more information before deciding whether a report to help prevent future deaths was needed. However, in a statement outside court read by a lawyer, the family said they "still have questions unanswered". They said they will invite the police to refer the case to the Crown Prosecution Service for consideration.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Agilent (NYSE:A) Beats Q1 Sales Targets, Stock Soars
Life sciences tools company Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A) reported Q1 CY2025 results beating Wall Street's revenue expectations , with sales up 6% year on year to $1.67 billion. Guidance for next quarter's revenue was better than expected at $1.66 billion at the midpoint, 0.9% above analysts' estimates. Its non-GAAP profit of $1.31 per share was 3.6% above analysts' consensus estimates. Is now the time to buy Agilent? Find out in our full research report. Revenue: $1.67 billion vs analyst estimates of $1.62 billion (6% year-on-year growth, 2.7% beat) Adjusted EPS: $1.31 vs analyst estimates of $1.26 (3.6% beat) Adjusted EBITDA: $402 million vs analyst estimates of $463.4 million (24.1% margin, 13.2% miss) The company slightly lifted its revenue guidance for the full year to $6.77 billion at the midpoint from $6.72 billion Management reiterated its full-year Adjusted EPS guidance of $5.58 at the midpoint Operating Margin: 18%, down from 23.1% in the same quarter last year Free Cash Flow Margin: 6.4%, down from 14.6% in the same quarter last year Organic Revenue rose 5.3% year on year (-7.4% in the same quarter last year) Market Capitalization: $31.72 billion Originally spun off from Hewlett-Packard in 1999 as its measurement and analytical division, Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A) provides analytical instruments, software, services, and consumables for laboratory workflows in life sciences, diagnostics, and applied chemical markets. A company's long-term performance is an indicator of its overall quality. Any business can have short-term success, but a top-tier one grows for years. Regrettably, Agilent's sales grew at a mediocre 4.8% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years. This fell short of our benchmark for the healthcare sector and is a rough starting point for our analysis. We at StockStory place the most emphasis on long-term growth, but within healthcare, a half-decade historical view may miss recent innovations or disruptive industry trends. Agilent's performance shows it grew in the past but relinquished its gains over the last two years, as its revenue fell by 3% annually. We can better understand the company's sales dynamics by analyzing its organic revenue, which strips out one-time events like acquisitions and currency fluctuations that don't accurately reflect its fundamentals. Over the last two years, Agilent's organic revenue averaged 3% year-on-year declines. Because this number aligns with its normal revenue growth, we can see the company's core operations (not acquisitions and divestitures) drove most of its results. This quarter, Agilent reported year-on-year revenue growth of 6%, and its $1.67 billion of revenue exceeded Wall Street's estimates by 2.7%. Company management is currently guiding for a 5.2% year-on-year increase in sales next quarter. Looking further ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 3.8% over the next 12 months. Although this projection implies its newer products and services will fuel better top-line performance, it is still below average for the sector. Here at StockStory, we certainly understand the potential of thematic investing. Diverse winners from Microsoft (MSFT) to Alphabet (GOOG), Coca-Cola (KO) to Monster Beverage (MNST) could all have been identified as promising growth stories with a megatrend driving the growth. So, in that spirit, we've identified a relatively under-the-radar profitable growth stock benefiting from the rise of AI, available to you FREE via this link. Operating margin is an important measure of profitability as it shows the portion of revenue left after accounting for all core expenses – everything from the cost of goods sold to advertising and wages. It's also useful for comparing profitability across companies with different levels of debt and tax rates because it excludes interest and taxes. Agilent has been an efficient company over the last five years. It was one of the more profitable businesses in the healthcare sector, boasting an average operating margin of 21.5%. Analyzing the trend in its profitability, Agilent's operating margin rose by 1.7 percentage points over the last five years, as its sales growth gave it operating leverage. Zooming into its more recent performance, however, we can see the company's margin has decreased by 2.6 percentage points on a two-year basis. If Agilent wants to pass our bar, it must prove it can expand its profitability consistently. This quarter, Agilent generated an operating profit margin of 18%, down 5.1 percentage points year on year. This contraction shows it was less efficient because its expenses grew faster than its revenue. We track the long-term change in earnings per share (EPS) for the same reason as long-term revenue growth. Compared to revenue, however, EPS highlights whether a company's growth is profitable. Agilent's EPS grew at a remarkable 11.2% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years, higher than its 4.8% annualized revenue growth. This tells us the company became more profitable on a per-share basis as it expanded. We can take a deeper look into Agilent's earnings to better understand the drivers of its performance. As we mentioned earlier, Agilent's operating margin declined this quarter but expanded by 1.7 percentage points over the last five years. Its share count also shrank by 8.7%, and these factors together are positive signs for shareholders because improving profitability and share buybacks turbocharge EPS growth relative to revenue growth. In Q1, Agilent reported EPS at $1.31, up from $1.22 in the same quarter last year. This print beat analysts' estimates by 3.6%. Over the next 12 months, Wall Street expects Agilent's full-year EPS of $5.40 to grow 7.7%. We enjoyed seeing Agilent beat analysts' organic revenue expectations this quarter. We were also glad its revenue outperformed Wall Street's estimates. Adding to the good news, Agilent raised its full-year revenue guidance. Zooming out, we think this was a good quarter. The stock traded up 6.2% to $117.70 immediately following the results. So should you invest in Agilent right now? What happened in the latest quarter matters, but not as much as longer-term business quality and valuation, when deciding whether to invest in this stock. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here, it's free.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Keysight's (NYSE:KEYS) Q1 Sales Beat Estimates, Quarterly Revenue Guidance Slightly Exceeds Expectations
Electronic measurement provider Keysight (NYSE:KEYS) reported Q1 CY2025 results exceeding the market's revenue expectations , with sales up 7.4% year on year to $1.31 billion. Guidance for next quarter's revenue was better than expected at $1.32 billion at the midpoint, 1.4% above analysts' estimates. Its non-GAAP profit of $1.70 per share was 3.3% above analysts' consensus estimates. Is now the time to buy Keysight? Find out in our full research report. Revenue: $1.31 billion vs analyst estimates of $1.28 billion (7.4% year-on-year growth, 1.8% beat) Adjusted EPS: $1.70 vs analyst estimates of $1.65 (3.3% beat) Revenue Guidance for Q2 CY2025 is $1.32 billion at the midpoint, above analyst estimates of $1.30 billion Adjusted EPS guidance for Q2 CY2025 is $1.66 at the midpoint, below analyst estimates of $1.69 Operating Margin: 15.8%, up from 14.6% in the same quarter last year Free Cash Flow Margin: 35%, up from 6.1% in the same quarter last year Market Capitalization: $28.13 billion Spun off from Hewlett-Packard in 2014, Keysight (NYSE:KEYS) offers electronic measurement products for use in various sectors. A company's long-term performance is an indicator of its overall quality. Any business can experience short-term success, but top-performing ones enjoy sustained growth for years. Unfortunately, Keysight's 4% annualized revenue growth over the last five years was sluggish. This was below our standard for the industrials sector and is a poor baseline for our analysis. Long-term growth is the most important, but within industrials, a half-decade historical view may miss new industry trends or demand cycles. Keysight's performance shows it grew in the past but relinquished its gains over the last two years, as its revenue fell by 4.4% annually. Keysight isn't alone in its struggles as the Inspection Instruments industry experienced a cyclical downturn, with many similar businesses observing lower sales at this time. This quarter, Keysight reported year-on-year revenue growth of 7.4%, and its $1.31 billion of revenue exceeded Wall Street's estimates by 1.8%. Company management is currently guiding for a 8.1% year-on-year increase in sales next quarter. Looking further ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 4.9% over the next 12 months. While this projection implies its newer products and services will spur better top-line performance, it is still below the sector average. Unless you've been living under a rock, it should be obvious by now that generative AI is going to have a huge impact on how large corporations do business. While Nvidia and AMD are trading close to all-time highs, we prefer a lesser-known (but still profitable) stock benefiting from the rise of AI. Click here to access our free report one of our favorites growth stories. Operating margin is one of the best measures of profitability because it tells us how much money a company takes home after procuring and manufacturing its products, marketing and selling those products, and most importantly, keeping them relevant through research and development. Keysight has been a well-oiled machine over the last five years. It demonstrated elite profitability for an industrials business, boasting an average operating margin of 21.4%. This result isn't surprising as its high gross margin gives it a favorable starting point. Looking at the trend in its profitability, Keysight's operating margin decreased by 2.7 percentage points over the last five years. This raises questions about the company's expense base because its revenue growth should have given it leverage on its fixed costs, resulting in better economies of scale and profitability. In Q1, Keysight generated an operating profit margin of 15.8%, up 1.3 percentage points year on year. The increase was encouraging, and because its operating margin rose more than its gross margin, we can infer it was more efficient with expenses such as marketing, R&D, and administrative overhead. Revenue trends explain a company's historical growth, but the long-term change in earnings per share (EPS) points to the profitability of that growth – for example, a company could inflate its sales through excessive spending on advertising and promotions. Keysight's EPS grew at an unimpressive 7.8% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years. This performance was better than its flat revenue but doesn't tell us much about its business quality because its operating margin didn't expand. Diving into the nuances of Keysight's earnings can give us a better understanding of its performance. A five-year view shows that Keysight has repurchased its stock, shrinking its share count by 8.5%. This tells us its EPS outperformed its revenue not because of increased operational efficiency but financial engineering, as buybacks boost per share earnings. Like with revenue, we analyze EPS over a more recent period because it can provide insight into an emerging theme or development for the business. For Keysight, its two-year annual EPS declines of 9.8% show it's continued to underperform. These results were bad no matter how you slice the data. In Q1, Keysight reported EPS at $1.70, up from $1.41 in the same quarter last year. This print beat analysts' estimates by 3.3%. Over the next 12 months, Wall Street expects Keysight's full-year EPS of $6.74 to grow 8.2%. We enjoyed seeing Keysight beat analysts' revenue and EPS expectations this quarter. We were also glad its revenue guidance for next quarter slightly exceeded Wall Street's estimates. On the other hand, its EPS guidance for next quarter missed. Still, this print had some key positives. The stock traded up 3.4% to $168.03 immediately following the results. Indeed, Keysight had a rock-solid quarterly earnings result, but is this stock a good investment here? The latest quarter does matter, but not nearly as much as longer-term fundamentals and valuation, when deciding if the stock is a buy. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here, it's free. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Mint
17-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
Harsh Goenka shares Apple co-founder Steve Jobs video on ‘power of asking', netizens say ‘very important life lesson'
RPG Enterprises chairman Harsh Goenka hailed the American technology mastermind and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs for his 'power of asking' strategy, according to the social media post on platform X. In the post on X, Goenka highlighted Steve Jobs' strategy of asking for things in life, rather than waiting for them. 'The power of asking- Steve Jobs,' he said, sharing an old video of the Apple co-founder. In the video, Steve Jobs was telling people how the power of asking can change your life, and he ended up narrating an incident from his own life when he called up Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard. The young Steve Jobs' life story highlighted an important lesson for people, who will get rewarded in life if they are willing to ask for it. 'I've never found anybody that didn't want to help me if I asked them for help. I always call them up. I called up.. this will date me, but I called up Bill Hewlett when I was 12 years old and he lived in Palo Alto. His number was still in the phonebook, and he answered the phone himself,' said Jobs in the video shared by Harsh Goenka. Jobs introduced himself as a 12-year-old in high school who wanted to make frequency counters. Even though Bill Hewlett laughed at the incident, he helped young Steve Jobs with all the spare parts he needed to build this frequency counter. 'Hi, I'm Steve Jobs. I'm 12 years old. I'm a student in high school, and I want to build a frequency counter. And I was wondering if you had any spare parts I could have. And he laughed, and he gave me the spare parts to build this frequency counter,' said the innovator in the video. Hewlett also offered him a summer job at the company's assembly line, 'putting nuts and bolts together on frequency counters.' Jobs felt that he was in 'heaven' and since then he never found that people unwill to help him, he just had to ask. 'He got me a job at the place to go, and I was in heaven. And I've never found anyone who said no or hung up the phone when I called. I just asked, and when people ask me, I try to be as responsive to pay that debt of gratitude back,' said Steve Jobs. In the video, Steve Jobs also revealed his concerns about people not willing to pick up the phone and call just to ask. This is one of the biggest reasons which separates people from those who are doing things. Sharing advice for individuals like his young self, he advised the employees to be willing to accept failure in life. 'Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that's what separates sometimes the people who do things from the people that just dream about them,' said Jobs. 'You gotta act, and you gotta be willing to fail. You got to be willing to crash and burn,' he said. People on social media appreciated how Harsh Goenka highlighted an important lesson through sharing Steve Jobs' video on his social media platform. 'Very important life lesson. Thank for sharing Harsh ji,' said Siddharth R Mayur responding to Goenka's post. 'Asking is a great form of learning,' said another social media user named Anjali Modakia.
Mint
15-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
Barry Eichengreen: The end of American exceptionalism?
American exceptionalism has had a long and successful run. Gauged by the growth of GDP per capita and other statistical measures, the US economy has outpaced its advanced-economy rivals since the turn of the century. America is home to the world's leading high-tech firms. It is at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI). And investors have cashed in on that outperformance: as of late 2024, US large-cap markets had yielded an average annual return of 13% over the preceding ten years, compared to just 6% for European markets. The question is whether US President Donald Trump's destructive policies have now brought this economic exceptionalism to an end. That prospect was reflected in the stock market in April, when the S&P 500 fell more than 17% from its record high after Trump's inauguration. While the market has since recovered most of those losses, volatility remains high. Also Read: Is American exceptionalism finally on its last legs? Important voices, not only in the administration, insist that this is just one of those market disturbances that happen from time to time. The wellsprings of American economic excellence—high-tech dominance, a business-friendly environment, deep and liquid financial markets, and a culture of entrepreneurship—remain intact. Just give it time, say the optimists, and Trump's aberrant policies will be reined in by the bond market, mid-term US elections and the courts. This Panglossian take underestimates how recent events tear at the fabric of US economic exceptionalism and how difficult that fabric will be to mend. America's dominance of high technology derives not just from a vibrant business sector, but also from basic research done in universities and government, and from close public-private sector collaboration. It is no coincidence that the garage in which Hewlett-Packard originated was in Palo Alto, California, close to Stanford University. Nor is the fact that the internet emanated from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with an assist from the National Science Foundation. Also Read: Nouriel Roubini: US economic tailwinds will help it overcome tariff headwinds The Trump administration's attack on university and government research funding pulls the rug from under this collaboration. US researchers who have seen their funding cut and their academic and intellectual freedom curtailed are being actively recruited by other countries. The same is true of the administration's hostility to immigration. The excellence of America's universities and innovation hubs, such as Silicon Valley, depends on scientists and entrepreneurs who come to the US to study and decide to stay. Given what has been revealed about the way Trump's America treats immigrants, they will now think twice about studying and staying. Much has been written about how Trump's tariffs will disrupt US companies' supply chains and raise production costs. To be sure, companies will adapt, for example by re-shoring some production. But adapting to Trump's arbitrary trade regime will also mean offering under-the-table favours in exchange for concessions. A transactional president has revealed the US to be a transactional society, where the highest returns accrue to rent seeking and cronyism rather than initiative and innovation. Also Read: Will a US-China trade agreement work? Don't count on it A business environment in which access to the Oval Office is the key to success may increase market concentration, since only a few billionaires have such access. The US has seen how rising market concentration is accompanied by increased price mark-ups over costs, declining market-entry rates, falling job re-allocation and a growing gap between leading and lagging firms. Sooner or later, productivity growth will become a casualty. Ultimately, economic growth depends on the rule of law, as proponents of the 'Washington Consensus' have told developing countries for decades. That, in turn, depends on a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances to prevent the arbitrary exercise of executive authority. Also Read: How Trump's advisors got tied up in knots over his tariff obsession All of this was well understood by framers of the US Constitution. But recent political events in the US have shown that constitutional and statutory safeguards are weaker than previously supposed. A president who seeks to amass power can use executive orders to override the spending decisions of Congress and the regulatory decisions of supposedly independent government agencies. He can fire independent government administrators at will. He can stare down spineless members of Congress with political threats. Such a president can also disregard court rulings. If the bond market threatens to misbehave, he can lean on the Fed. As for the disciplining effect of the ballot box, he can dismiss the results of free and fair elections. Also Read: Columbia missed the bus of academic freedom that Harvard took In this environment, neither property rights nor contracts are secure. And as generations of political scientists have taught us, secure property rights are a fundamental determinant of investment, while reliable contract enforcement is the foundation of commerce and trade. Some observers expect the next US president to turn the clock back to pre-Trump days, making secure property rights, reliable contract enforcement and equality under the law facts of American life again. But some lessons, once learnt, are not easily unlearnt. Many investors, like house cats, will not jump onto a hot stove twice. ©2025/Project Syndicate The author is professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author, most recently, of 'In Defense of Public Debt'.
