Posted by Virus Bulletin on Jul 15, 2004
Profits more than doubled since last year.
Symantec has announced record profits for its fiscal first quarter of 2005. The AV company reported a profit of $131m on sales of $577m - profit having more than doubled since the same quarter last year.
Symantec chiefs said some of the company's success could be attributed to the fact that the appearance of Sasser earlier this year sparked interest in its consumer product. CFO Greg Myers said: "The outbreak of Sasser had a powerful impact on our consumer channel, but enterprise [revenue also] grew by 29 per cent, which is better than our peer group."
Myers expected profits to be affected slightly this quarter by increased spending, which includes a recruitment drive across the company and another bout of acquisitions.
Adding to its reputation as something of a 'shopaholic' among AV vendors, Symantec purchased anti-spam startup TurnTide last month. The AV vendor is reported to have paid $28 million cash for the acquisition of the small firm, which was spun off from privacy protection consultancy ePrivacy Group just six months ago, and sells a router-based email filtering technology. The purchase came just three weeks after Symantec completed its acquisition of anti-spam firm and email filtering company Brightmail.
According to Symantec, TurnTide's technology is intended to become part of a multi-tier anti-spam line-up that will include Brightmail and other Symantec products.
Posted on 15 July 2004 by Virus Bulletin
