Security company McAfee is planning to go public. This could raise more than a billion dollars and give the company a valuation of more than 5 billion dollars. That’s what The Wall Street Journal reports based on insiders familiar with the conversations.
According to the insiders, McAfee and the owners of the company will meet with bankers this week to discuss an IPO. It is possible that the company will already be listed on the stock exchange this year.
Founded in 1987 by John McAfee, the security company recently expanded into the cloud and mobile devices. McAfee is now owned by private equity companies TPG and Thoma Bravo, and Intel is also associated with them.
A possible IPO would be the second for the company: it was already listed in 1999, but was bought by Intel in 2011 for $7.5 billion. Intel then hoped to combine its chips with McAfee’s software, but this did not produce the desired results. In 2016, TPG acquired a 51 percent stake in Intel.
Exhibition
In the meantime, the company is once again raising a lot of money. So now a new IPO is being considered. In the past was also considered to sell the company, and that is still an option, say the insiders. In December last year, for example, there were still discussions with Thoma Bravo to take over the entire company from TPG and Intel.
Nevertheless, the owners are positive about an IPO, because other security companies – Symantec, Avast and Palo Alto Networks – have been doing well on the fair lately.
The IPO also comes at a time of healthy investor interest in cyber security. For example, cloud-based security software manufacturer CrowdStrike Holdings is selling its shares for almost double the $34 it asked for during the IPO a month ago.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
12 hours ago
