Emerging trends favour Symantec

Article Excerpt

SYMANTEC CORP. $18 (Nasdaq symbol SYMC; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 763.2 million; Market cap: $13.7 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.3; No dividends paid; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.symantec.com) makes software that protects computers from viruses and electronic attacks. The popular Norton anti-virus program is the company’s best-known product. In the past few years, Symantec has expanded its corporate-security operations by purchasing other software companies. That has cut its exposure to cyclical home-computer sales. Big purchases fuelled growth Its biggest purchase was in July 2005, when it bought data-storage specialist Veritas Software Corp. for $13.5 billion in stock. In April 2007, it bought Altiris Inc. for $1.05 billion. Altiris’s products let network administrators install and manage software on a number of different computers. Thanks to these purchases, Symantec now gets 70% of its revenue from business clients. These new businesses also pushed up its revenue by 48.4%, from $4.1 billion in 2006 to $6.1 billion in 2009 (fiscal…