Introduction to Symantec News
Symantec Corporation is the world’s best cybersecurity company. They help governments, organizations, and people secure important data from wherever. Organizations from all over the world depend on Symantec for integrated and intelligent solutions against cyberattacks. These could occur across endpoints, infrastructures, and cloud.
At the same time, there are 50 million people in the world that uses Symantec certificates and other products, including Norton and Lifelock. It protects digital lives in their homes and digital devices. Symantec handles large civilian cyber intelligence networks, which helps it to detect and protect against a lot of the most advanced threats.
Cybersecurity is now a critical imperative for businesses in protecting everything they own, especially data. You can read more about Symantec news and the importance of their company as you read more from this post.
Broadcom Symantec Acquisition
Broadcom Inc. is a corporation in Delaware with headquarters in San Jose, CA. They are a leader in global technology that manufactures a wide range of semiconductors and infrastructure software solutions. Symantec is responsible for designing, developing, and supplying them to their market. That includes networking, data center, broadband, enterprise software, industrial, and storage.
Last year, Broadcom reported that they almost bought Symantec for $15 billion. However, they were able to lower the price to $10.7 billion, which is a deal that is expected to close in the first quarter of 2020. Broadcom mentioned that acquiring Symantec’s security portfolio is a big help to them. That is because it will significantly widen its infrastructure software footprints while it tries to become number 1. The portfolio Broadcom gains will provide Symantec solutions for web security, endpoint security, data loss prevention, and cloud security.
Broadcom is expecting that 50% of its free cash flow will come from its current dividend policy, which will remain the same. However, Broadcom is now planning to use its excess cash flow which is not dividend payments. This is to pay debts as opposed to repurchasing stocks. Broadcom envisions that accessing the investment-grade credit market is important to their strategy. They intend to maintain their credit rating investment grade.
The transaction is expected to close during the first quarter of 2020 and it is subject to the regulatory approvals of the US, Japan, and EU. After the transaction is closed, Broadcom will acquire and incorporate Symantec’s brand name into their portfolio.
Symantec will become the company’s undervalued asset because they have 50 million users around the world. Thus, the management team considers it a business that can produce $2.5 billion today in yearly revenue with room for growth. Symantec is an attractive asset to most private equity investors.
There are still a lot of go-forward challenges that Symantec will face with the new look. Symantec’s enterprise and consumer technologies, research efforts and teams are still intertwined. There is still no way of telling how these two units can collaborate going forward after they are separated.
While Lifelock acquisition has powered Symantec’s consumer revenue, it is still unclear if combining antimalware and identity protection is a good move. There is no way of telling at this point if the market would go for that. This is considering if the entire strategy of the vendor hinges on because it is high-risk yet rewarding.
Accenture’s Symantec Acquisition
Since Accenture plans to acquire Symantec, they have said their intention to become the main player on the services stage of managed security. By acquiring Symantec, Accenture Security offers a comprehensive managed service for businesses around the world. They will be able to detect cybersecurity threats and manage them before it affects their company.
Symantec’s cybersecurity arm does its operations from its centers in Japan, India, Australia, UK, Singapore, and the US.
Part of Symantec’s cybersecurity services portfolio includes monitoring of global threats and analysis. They will do this through secure network operation centers, industry-specific threat intelligence, real-time adversary, and incident response services.
After the completion of the acquisition, Accenture is hoping to offer a more personalized cybersecurity service to its clients.
Productivity Improvement
Symantec announced that for 2020, their restructuring plan will change in order to improve productivity. In addition, they also plan to decrease the complexity of their business management. Symantec is expecting to lessen their net global headcount to about 7%. Symantec also wants to downsize, close, or vacate some facilities and data centers in line with their restructuring plan. The company projects that its projected incurred total cost with the restructuring is about $100 million. About $75 million is for severance and site closures will have a $25 million budget. They are expecting to complete these by 2020.
Resignation of Symantec CEO
The shares of Symantec have more than 13% of trading session extension after Greg Clark stepped down from the board. He is the maker of the security software, president, and CEO of Symantec. Hence, Symantec has a weak outlook for 2020. They named Richard Hill as the Interim President after Clark Stepped down. The company commenced a search process to look for a CEO.
Aside from that, Symantec had a net income of $34 million during the fourth quarter of 2019. This is in comparison to their net loss of $59 million last year.
The adjusted earnings dropped to $0.39 per share which was $0.44 last year. The estimate normally does not include one-time items. The fourth-quarter revenues have dropped to $1.19 billion, which was previously $1.21 billion. The consensus revenue estimation was $1.21 billion during that quarter.
The company revenue achieved during the fourth quarter together with guidance and generated cash flow, the company will continue to deliver strong results. The average revenue per user will increase, over the coming years.
During the first quarter of 2020, Symantec is expected to adjust earnings of $0.30 and $0.34 per share. The adjusted revenues of $1.75 billion to $1.205 billion. The analysts have current estimated earnings of $0.40 per share, and a revenue of $1.20 billion.
The company is projecting to see an adjustment earning of $1.65 to $1.80 per share. The revenues of $4.76 billion to $4.90 billion are also expected. Currently, the analyst’s estimation is at $1.78 per share and $4.97 billion in revenue.
Sheila Jordan Added to Slack’s Board of Directors
Sheila Jordan is Symantec’s senior vice president and chief information officer. She is now an independent member of the board, and the hiring takes place after Symantec completes a direct listing that was put on the New York Stock Exchange.
Jordan is responsible for creating information technology strategy and Symantec operations. This also brings the expertise of Jordan to the board, which is beneficial to the company. Before becoming part of Symantec, Jordan was the senior vice president of Cisco’s IT. She was also Disney Destination’s executive for 15 years.
With Jordan being newly appointed, Slack seems to be making their security tougher. Furthermore, Slack has published a blog post about the company’s newest security strategy, which was most likely part of a bigger attempt to attract potential customers. Their main target is the ones from highly-regulated industries. That is because they are worried about the security processes of the company.
These are Symantec news to expect in the year 2020.
