Mike McMullen
President and Chief Executive Officer at Agilent Technologies
Thanks, Parmeet, and welcome to your first Agilent's earnings call as our new Vice President of Investor Relations. And thanks everyone for joining our call today.
Before covering our third quarter financial results, I want to acknowledge the recent passing of Dr Tachi Yamada, a giant in our industry and a former Agilent Board member. Tachi was much more than a knowledgeable people involved as a Board member for nine years. As many of you on the call already know, Tachi lived a very full life as a doctor, a scientist, as a humanitarian who has driven help others. I know that the Agilent team is not alone and recognize that Tachi Yamada will be greatly missed and we extend our deepest sympathies to Tachi's family.
Now under the third quarter review and our updated outlook for the year. In Q3, the very strong broad based momentum in our business continues. The Agilent team delivered another outstanding quarter exceeding our expectations. Q3 revenue of $1.59 billion is up reported 26% and is up 21% core. This is against the mass decline of 3% in Q3 of last year, so we are well above fiscal year 2019 pre-pandemic levels. In addition, as other part of the sign of continued momentum, orders outpaced revenue during the quarter. Our growth is broad based across all business groups, markets and geographies. The combination of strong top line performance and execution translated into excellent growth and profitability and earnings per share. Our Q3 operating margin is 26%, this is up 230 basis points from last year.
EPS is $1.10, up 41% year-over-year. Agilent's success continues to be driven by our build and buy growth strategy and execution prowess. We are developing market-leading products and services, investing in fast growing businesses while delivering outstanding customer service and continue to drive profitability. Since the onset of the pandemic, we have taken actions to ensure Agilent emerged even stronger as a company. While we have yet to leave COVID-19 in the rearview mirror, our Q3 results are another indicator our actions are delivering the intended results.
Bob will provide more details on end markets and geographies, but I want to briefly highlight our performance in our two largest end markets, pharma and chemical energy. We continue to perform extremely well in pharma, our largest market growing 27% with strength in both small and large molecule segments. Our large molecule business grew roughly 52% in the quarter and now represents 36% of our overall pharma revenue, up from the mid 20s just a few years ago. And chemical energy, our business is recovering faster than expected, expanding 23% in the quarter. This is an acceleration of the momentum we achieved in the first half and our order funnel continues to strengthen.
Looking at our performance by business unit, The Life Sciences and Applied Markets Group generated revenue of $680 million. LSAG is up 22% on a reported basis, this is up 18% core of just a 4% decline last year. LSAG's growth is broad based across all end markets. Our performance is led by strength in pharma, which is up 22% and chemical energy up 31%. All businesses delivered strong growth led by Cell Analysis at 38% growth and our LC and LCMS businesses, which grew 22%. We continue to strengthen our position in the fast growing large molecule market segment. During the quarter, the LSAG team launched three InfinityLab Bio LC systems at the well attended InfinityLab LC Virtual Conference in June. These new products further extend our LC leadership position.
In addition, building on our already strong pharma offerings, we launched new compliance ready LC/Q-TOF and LC/TOF solution to our portfolio in the quarter. The Agilent CrossLab Group posted revenue of $560 million, this is up a reported 21% and up 15% on a core basis. These results are on top of 1% growth last year. The business is benefiting from increased activity and customer labs and instrument connect rates. This is leading to more contracted services, on-demand services and consumables consumption across all end markets. All end markets grew mid teens or higher with the exception of environmental and forensics, but still grew 9%.
The pandemic has shown ACG to be our most durable business, with ACG grown each quarter since COVID-19 first emerged. Our customer-focused approach and digital investments continue to pay dividends. Looking forward, instrument placements and demand bode well with strong performance by ACG as we drive attachment rates and increased customer lifetime value.
The Diagnostics and Genomics Group produced revenue of $346 million, up 44% reported and up 37% core, compared to an 8% decline last year. The growth was broad based across product lines and regions and was led by our NASD GMP oligo business. The ramp of our facility in Frederick, Colorado continues to go very well. The quarterly results exceeded our expectations, easily surpassing the $30 million revenue milestone, while one quarter does not make a trend, our team has done a tremendous job increasing the output in a high quality manner. This gives us increased confidence in our ability to exceed the $200 million annual run rate of revenue with existing capacity.
In addition, the trained manufacturing line expense is well underway and on schedule. Our genomics instrumentation and consumables businesses rebounded strongly in the quarter as did our pathology-related businesses. For the first time in several quarters, we saw a diagnostic testing above pre-pandemic levels while we are watching Delta variant very closely, to date we have not seen a meaningful negative impact and testing volumes.
I also want to highlight our performance in China. While still less than 10% of DGG revenue, our China business grew 50% in the quarter. We continue to see tangible progress in building a stronger China market position. In Q3, we signed our first ever companion diagnostic development services agreement with a China based biopharma company. Earlier this month, we also announced the initiation of in-country manufacturing for our SureSelect product line. We are very bullish about long-term growth prospects in China for our DGG product and services offerings.
In addition, the integration of Resolution Bioscience team is going well and we are very pleased to enter and expand our participation in the fast growing NGS based cancer diagnostic market. It was a busy quarter for Agilent. So, I have a few other achievements I'd like to share with you. Last month, we published Agilent's 21st Annual Corporate Social Responsibility Report. At a time when some are just starting to look at issues like sustainability and societal [Indecipherable] impact, this has always been a key part of who we are as a company. We've been addressing these issues since our founding more than two decades ago. I would encourage you to review our report on the Agilent website.
We're also very pleased to receive recognition of the Great Place to Work in United States by the Great Place to Work Institute. This resulted just one more example of Agilent having a highly engaged and energized team, and as you know, teams with high engagement win in the market. Looking ahead, building on another excellent quarter and the momentum we're seeing, we expect the business to continue to perform well as we close out what we believe we'll be an outstanding fiscal year 2021. As a result, we are once again raising our full-year revenue and earnings guidance. I will share more details, but we are expecting a continuation of our excellent top line growth and earnings generation. While the world has yet to fully emerge from a global pandemic, Agilent is well positioned to deliver excellent results again in the fourth quarter. I remain very proud of the Agilent team's ability to consistently deliver for our customers and shareholders.
Thank you for being on the call today and look forward to your questions. I will now hand the call off to Bob. Bob?