After an underwhelming fourth quarter of last year, which caused its share price to slump (see Instrumenta 25 (2) 12), Waters Corp (Milford, MA) responded with an encouraging first quarter of calendar 2008 and raised its outlook for the full year, boosting its shares by 9%. Although sales fell just shy of analysts' expectations, rising by 12% year-on-year to 371.7 million, affected by weak Japanese markets and delayed spending on highend research instrumentation from European pharmaceutical customers, net income grew by 22% to 68.5 million, benefiting from favourable currency effects.
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