Contact: Brenon Daly
Riverbed Technology just keeps flowing higher. Shares in the company, which hit the Nasdaq four years ago, notched their highest-ever close Wednesday. The market values the WAN traffic optimization (WTO) vendor at a staggering $4.2bn. That works out to some 7.7 times projected 2010 sales of $545m and some 6.2 times next year’s forecasted revenue of some $680m.
The company has garnered that rich valuation by selling its Steelhead appliances, which basically help customers move network traffic more quickly. Through M&A, Riverbed has added some smarts to its boxes. That expansion has been crucial for Riverbed because it is still basically a one-product shop, while its rivals (notably Cisco and Blue Coat Systems, but also Juniper Networks) pitch WTO wares as part of a larger network offering.
Most recently, the company picked up protocol analysis and packet-capture technology with its purchase of CACE Technologies. Although exact terms on the deal – only Riverbed’s second acquisition – weren’t revealed, the company did indicate that it paid less than $20m for CACE, which is perhaps best known for its Wireshark and WinPcap tools. (My colleague Steve Steinke has our full report on the purchase.) The deal comes a year and a half after Riverbed bought Mazu Networks, which added visibility and security technology through the startup’s network behavior anomaly detection offering.