McAfee today said it will sell its enterprise security business to Symphony Technology Group (STG) in an all-cash deal for $4 billion.
About a year ago, STG bought security vendor RSA from Dell Technologies for a little over $2 billion.
The sale comes less than six months after McAfee went public on the Nasdaq. And in a surprise move, and after spending the last several years transitioning from a consumer antivirus business to an enterprise security powerhouse, McAfee now plans to pivot to a pure-play consumer cybersecurity company.
The sale “will unleash our consumer business as our singular focus going forward while unlocking the value of our enterprise business at a very attractive valuation,” McAfee CEO Peter Leav said on a conference call with investors.
McAfee’s enterprise security business’ revenue topped $1.3 billion in fiscal 2020, and it claims 86% of Fortune 100 firms globally use its cloud security platform.
Meanwhile, the vendor’s consumer business’ revenue grew 24% year over year to $1.6 billion in in fiscal 2020. On the conference call, Leav said that market will reach $19 billion by 2024.
The move mirrors similar transactions by McAfee competitors Synamtec and Sophos. In August 2019, Broadcom paid $10.7 billion to acquire Symantec’s enterprise security business and its name. Just five months later, Broadcom sold a piece of it — Symantec’s Cyber Security Services unit — to Accenture for an undisclosed amount. And in October 2019, private equity firm Thoma Bravo bought Sophos for $3.9 billion.