Symantec agrees to sell Veritas to PE Carlyle Group

Q116 results took a back seat to the news that Symantec has agreed to sell Veritas to PE firm Carlyle Group and Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC, for $8bn in cash, rather than carve the information management business out and run it as a public company as was originally planned (see here).

The results cannot be ignored however and underline that the move cannot come too soon (and an IPO may have taken longer to execute). In CEO Michael Brown’s words Q1 was “disappointing” - a mild description for revenue that slumped 14% yoy to $1.49bn, and net income that plummeted 50% to $117m. The results were impacted by currency and an extra week in the June 2014 quarter but even with these effects removed revenue was flat. Poor sales execution, combined with the distraction of the Veritas deal were cited as the reasons, with Brown offering assurances that they were short term impacts. Shares tanked following the release of the results. Subscribers can read our expanded view on the Symantec decision in HotViewsExtra here.

Posted by Angela Eager at '15:54' - Tagged: acquisition   software   divestment   security