Computer security giant Symantec of Mountain View, California on Wednesday stated that its fiscal year’s first quarter profit got doubled on the flat sales. This year the net income as stated by the company is $161 million, which is more than even double of the $73 million made by the company in the same time last year. Although the Sales for this quarter remains the same $1.43 billion.
Analysts predicted 19 cents a share for this year, but the company earned about 20 cents per share which is slightly better from what was predicted. The CEO Enrique Salem said that this quarter they saw lengthening of procurement cycles driven by continued cautiousness among IT buyers. ”Delays in finalizing some contracts had hurt the company’s first quarter revenue”,added by Salem during a conference with the analysts.
Despite the under expected company’s sales predictions made by the analyst for the second half, Salem seems positive for the future business.
At the close of trading, before the company reported its earning the Symantec’s shares dropped 32 cents or 2.13 percent, to $14.67.Within hours after this statement was given the shares fell
from $1.17 to £13.50. The investment bank Jefferies & corporation in a note addressed to the clients of the company assured them about the companies status. It said that that the company “still the one to beat” in the computer security business. They also said that the accounts are about tenth of its revenue.
Jefferies also mentioned about the multiyear contract extension Symantec had last month with Hewlett-Packard to setup the computer maker’s PCs with a 60-day complimentary subscription to its Norton security software.
However, a recent note by investment bank FBR Capital Markets said that the HP deal is a much-needed boost for Symantec to maintain its leadership position in the market mostly because of similar contract signed by the Symantec rival McAfee in October with Dell.
FBR’s analysts concluded that with HP now in Symantec’s back pocket for another few years, we believe the company’s consumer franchise will remain rock solid.
The company’s quarterly revenue has dropped since it reached $1.65 billion in the first fiscal quarter of 2009, but the company has been trying hard to boost its business through a corporate buying gorge.
In May under a deal, Symantec has agreed to pay $1.28 billion for a part of Mountain View-based VeriSign’s business that protects financial transactions and other data on the Internet.
The month before in April the company also had such deals with PGP of Menlo Park and Guardian Edge Technologies of San Francisco to obtain technology for the protection of the e-mail and data. In recent year has cracked deals with 3o other companies.
Symantec being one of the best company in the field. It is the biggest maker of the computer security software and has shown remarkable progress in the recent years.