Agilent Technologies Inc. announced yesterday that they have closed their nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) business because they failed to meet growth and profitability objectives. The company acquired Varian, Inc. in May 2010 with the intention of becoming a global leader in bio-analytical measurement but over four years later they were not able to achieve that goal.

"Today's announcement represents a difficult decision, necessary to drive improved profitability," Mike McMullen, president, chief operating officer and CEO-elect of Agilent, said in a statement. "The NMR team has been extremely dedicated and has made many excellent contributions. However, this action is a step in ensuring that our investments are placed on higher-value life sciences, applied markets and diagnostics solutions that will continue to drive growth across the company."

They made the decision at the beginning of 2013 to leave the OEM and Specialty Magnet business, and then their MR business later in the year, in order to concentrate on their NMR portfolio. However, focusing their energy on NMR was not able to help them grow the business. The decision to close the business is one of the company's strategies for saving their Research Products Division.
Starting right away, Agilent will not be accepting any new NMR system orders but they will distribute NMR systems to facilities that already have orders in progress and they will also offer service for all of the systems that are already installed.

There will be an estimated 300 jobs lost within the next year and the majority of those jobs will be in Yarnton, U.K. and Santa Clara, Calif.

They will use about $72 million in restructuring charges in the fourth quarter of this year to pay for the cost of closing the business. For the fiscal year 2015, they anticipate anywhere from $20 million to $30 million in lost revenues but later on they expect revenue to increase by about $10 million in operating profit.

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