Cyber-security company Symantec has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Blue Coat for approximately $4.65bn in cash.
The offer has been accepted by the board of directors of both companies and is expected to be completed by the end of third quarter 2016.
After the deal is completed, Blue Coat CEO Greg Clark will become Symantec’s CEO and will also join the new company’s board.
Blue Coat is known for its web-security with a portfolio of integrated technologies, providing a platform to deliver Cloud Generation Security to about 15,000 customers worldwide.
As of May 2016, Blue Coat’s GAAP revenues were $598m and non-GAAP revenue was $755m. The company saw 17% growth on year-after-year basis with the help of new products and new customers.
The non-GAAP operating margins were 22% and cash flow from operations for the same time period was $135m.
With the acquisition of Blue Coat, Symantec says that it can improve its position as a leader in the field of cybersecurity. Symantec aims to offer better consumer protection from cyber threats with improved detection, protection and remediation systems stretching across endpoint, email, web, network and servers.
The company also said that the customers can benefit from threat detection technologies from both Symantec and Blue Coat. Symantec is also looking to offer better security ‘for the cloud, from the cloud and to the cloud’.
It also hopes that its data loss prevention technologies will applied at web proxy and to over 12,000 cloud applications.
Symantec chairman Dan Schulman said: "With this transaction, we will have the scale, portfolio and resources necessary to usher in a new era of innovation designed to help protect large customers and individual consumers against insider threats and sophisticated cybercriminals.
"Together, we will be best positioned to address the ever-evolving threat landscape, the massive changes introduced by the shift to mobile and cloud, and the challenges created by regulatory and privacy concerns.
"Greg and the entire Blue Coat leadership team have done an exceptional job of strengthening, growing and scaling their business.
"In addition to a proven track record of delivering scale and profitable growth, Greg brings significant leadership experience, deep security expertise and a history of successfully integrating companies into a single portfolio; he is the right person to lead Symantec as we advance our position as the leader in cybersecurity.
Blue Coat chief executive officer Greg Clark said: "Today, Symantec keeps global enterprises, governments and individual consumers protected with solutions across threat protection, information protection and managed services.
"Likewise, Blue Coat is the trusted source for protecting billions of web transactions daily and is the clear leader in the growing cloud security market. Once combined, we will offer customers around the world – from large enterprises and governments to individual consumers – unrivaled threat protection and unmatched cloud security.
"With employees of Blue Coat and Symantec coming together, we will be well positioned to drive meaningful growth and push the boundaries of innovation."
