Symantec Might Have Buyer for Veritas Data Storage Unit

By Ellen Muraskin

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Looks like Symantec may not spin out its Veritas data storage arm after all. The security company has found a possible buyer instead in private equity firm Carlyle Group LP, Bloomberg reported. The price, still under negotiation, is said to fall  between $7 billion and $8 billion. Symantec, which purchased Veritas in 2005 for approximately $13.5 billion, had previously planned to carve out the unit as a separately traded business under the Veritas Technologies name. Revenue in its Information Management segment for the fiscal year ending April 3 was up only 2 percent, to $2.56 billion; operating income was down 15 percent, to $486 million.

Matt Cain, Symantec EVP and chief product officer, assured customers and partners that the company was prepared to succeed as a standalone, and to push deeper into hybrid, heterogeneous storage and virtualized environments.  With that, the company announced five product releases and updates to “foundational” and “next-gen” products.

Updates to foundational products include:

Daniel Ives, analyst at FBR Capital Markets & Co., was quoted in Bloomberg Business as saying that the sale would give Symantec, for its part, the liquidity it needs to “help bulk up its next-generation cybersecurity.”

The deal would also mark the largest private-equity buy since Blackstone Group LP acquired Centro Properties Group’s U.S. shopping malls for about $9.4 billion.