Agilent initiated with a Market Perform at Bernstein

Bernstein initiated coverage of Agilent with a Market Perform rating and $123 price target. The analyst says the U.S. life science tools and diagnostics has the same positives as other healthcare sub-sectors, like enduring growth drivers, customers with locked-in processes, increasingly higher-margin / higher recurring revenue, and positive price, as well as a few of the negatives, like high levels of risk from pharma’s patent cliffs and managed care mis-pricing. The firm views Illumina as the relative “loser” in next-generation gene sequencing and calls Guardant its top pick among the molecular diagnostics companies.