In a $4 billion all-cash agreement, McAfee is selling its enterprise cybersecurity division to Palo Alto-based private equity firm Symphony Technology Group. mcafee technology group 4bsawersventurebeat.
The sale occurred just five months after McAfee returned to the Nasdaq after a 10-year absence, despite its shares stagnating around their $20 IPO price. With this most recent step, McAfee is firmly establishing itself as a consumer cybersecurity company, a category for which it is perhaps already more well-known thanks to its antivirus and VPN products.
McAfee has always focused on the commercial market despite having a well-known consumer brand. The company now states that its enterprise unit is a “trusted partner” for 86% of Fortune 100 organisations and will generate $1.3 billion in net sales for the 2020 fiscal year. mcafee symphony 4bsawersventurebeat.
Since Intel spun it out as a separate company in 2017, McAfee has made significant investments in the business world. Last year, McAfee introduced a new cloud-based security and information event management (SIEM) product to aid security operations teams in responding to attacks. This year, it has introduced a new extended detection and response (XDR) tool for enterprise endpoint, cloud, and network protection.
Having spent more than $2 billion to purchase RSA from Dell last year, Symphony Technology Group is no stranger to acquiring legacy security firms. This most recent move is in line with its recent investing mindset. According to a press statement, the acquisition is scheduled to close by the end of 2021, and the unit is planned to be rebranded “in the next months.”
McAfee’s corporate division has struggled in recent years due to intense competition from SentinelOne and CrowdStrike, two formidable rivals. For the fiscal year that concluded on December 26, 2020, net revenue increased slightly to $1.35 billion, up just 1.2 per cent from $1.33 billion the previous year.
Additionally, the division’s operating deficit grew to $180 million from $151 million a year earlier, a 19.2% increase. Most of McAfee’s expansion has been in its consumer sector, much like Symantec before its split, whose net revenue soared in the fiscal year ending December 26, 2020, to $1.56 billion, up 19.6% from $1.3 billion. Additionally, the division’s operating income surged to $333 million from $277 million a year earlier, up 20.2 per cent.