Agilent price target raised to $130 from $120 at Jefferies

Jefferies raised the firm’s price target on Agilent (A) to $130 from $120 and keeps a Hold rating on the shares. Earlier this week, Agilent launched Altura Ultra Inert High-performance Liquid Chromatography columns, the company’s first significant column launch in a decade, which adds an attractive consumables product cycle to compliment the instrument side, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm expects a nice pricing benefit, with early checks showing +20% on like-for-like columns and success similar to Waters’ (WAT) MaxPeak column launch a few years ago could add a low single digit percentage bump to its liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry business.