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Company name Agilent Technologies Inc.
Stock ticker A
Live stock price [stckqut]A[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good

MANAGEMENT EXECUTION

Employee productivity Good
Sales growth Poor
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Good
EBIT growth Good

ANALYSIS

Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $69.13
Target stock price (averages with growth) $60.7
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $25.49
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $49.97

The following company description is from Google Finance: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AA&sq=a&sp=2&ei=o11pUYihAoai0AGchwE

Agilent Technologies, Inc. (Agilent) is a measurement company providing bio-analytical and electronic measurement solutions to the communications, electronics, life sciences and chemical analysis industries. During the fiscal year ended October 31, 2011 (fiscal 2011), it had three business segments: electronic measurement business, chemical analysis business and life sciences business. Its electronic measurement business addresses the communications, electronics and other industries. Agilent’s chemical analysis business focuses on the petrochemical, environmental, forensics and food safety industries. Its life sciences business focuses on the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic and Government, bio-agriculture and food safety industries. In addition to its three businesses, it conducts research through Agilent Technologies Laboratories (Agilent Labs). In June 2012, the Company acquired cancer diagnostics company, Dako. In August 2012, the Company acquired Aurora SFC Systems, Inc.

Confident Investor comments: At this price and at this time, I think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in this stock.

If you would like to understand how to evaluate companies like I do on this site, please read my book, The Confident Investor.

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It is important to review your investment choices on a regular basis. If you invest in mutual funds, you should review them each February. I suggest February because you will receive your end-of-year statements by February so that you can pay taxes. You should look at these long-term investments and decide if it still fits your strategy and that your mix of investments is correct. If you want some advice on how to balance your portfolio, check out this article that I wrote. As always, I strongly suggest you confine your mutual funds to index funds rather than actively managed funds.

For stocks, the review needs to be a bit more frequent. You need to get out of stocks that no longer perform to your satisfaction. If you are not sure how to evaluate the growth rate and performance of your stocks, please consider reading my book, “The Confident Investor” as it will help you analyze companies to find the Good ones.

For the next several weeks, I will be doing a daily review of the companies on my Watch List. I will take off those companies that are no longer performing to my satisfaction. As a point of disclaimer, as quickly as possible after taking the stock off of my Watch List, I will also be selling any holding that I have in any of those poorly performing companies. If you would like to make sure you get these updates:

I regularly enjoy watching Jim Cramer of Mad Money on CNBC. One of the things that I most enjoy about him is that occasionally he admits when he is wrong. While I am not saying that I was wrong to put a company on my Watch List and then eventually take it off, I am saying that the base fundamentals of the company have changed. I am firing that company from my portfolio (I guess that makes me a little like another famous investor, Donald Trump).