Contact: Brenon Daly
Symantec gives its latest quarterly update on business after the closing bell Wednesday, with Wall Street wondering if the company will ever emerge from its ‘Veritas hangover.’ The storage business, which Symantec picked up in its $13.5bn purchase of Veritas in late 2004, has long weighed on Big Yellow’s overall performance. The division posted the sharpest revenue decline at Symantec’s three business units in the previous fiscal year, and was the only one that shrank again in the first fiscal quarter. The storage business will likely shrink again in the just-completed second fiscal quarter.
None of that, of course, is new. In fact, more than two years ago, we noted how Symantec was busy knocking rumors about unwinding any of the underperforming Veritas assets. But ever since rival McAfee sold to Intel, the paltry valuation of Symantec has come into sharp relief. Consider this: Symantec generates three times the sales of McAfee ($6bn vs. $2bn) but garners less than twice McAfee’s valuation (current market cap of $12.5bn vs. McAfee’s $7.7bn equity value in its sale to Intel).
Perhaps that valuation discrepancy alone accounts for the market buzz we’ve heard recently that Symantec may be (once again) considering shedding Veritas. That move has been looked at a number of different times, in a number of different ways, over the years.
Most recently, we heard a variation on it that had the storage business going to EMC in return for the RSA division and some cash. Another rumor had the business landing at a buyout shop. (Although shrinking, the storage business is still Symantec’s largest unit, and runs at the highest margin in the company. It generates more than $1bn in operating income.) Whatever the destination, it may well be time for Symantec to acknowledge that its grand experiment of a combination of storing and securing information hasn’t gone according to plans. Wall Street has certainly given that verdict, having clipped Symantec shares in half since the Veritas deal was announced.