Why Is The Symantec Stock Reacting Poorly?

The past couple of years have been transformational for Symantec (SYMC) with two divestitures, several acquisitions, and new leadership. It has now refocused itself exclusively on cybersecurity and has undertaken several measures to reduce complexity and costs.

Symantec’s Financials

Third quarter revenue was $1.21 billion, up 16% but below analyst estimates of $1.27 billion and previous guidance of $1.25 billion–$1.28 billion. Net income increased to $1.34 billion or $2.01 per share from $46 million or $0.07 per share as a result of the gain of over $600 million from the sale of its website certification business in August 2017 and $810 million in tax reforms. Non-GAAP EPS was $0.49 beating analyst estimates of $0.44.

It ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $2.1 billion.

By segment, Enterprise Security revenue was $625 million, down 3% and Consumer Digital Safety revenue was $584 million, up 47%.

For the current quarter, Symantec expects revenue in the range of $1.16 million to $1.19 million and non GAAP EPS of $0.37 to $0.41.

Due to the delayed pace of clients’ transition to the cloud, the company lowered its fiscal 2018 guidance to revenue of $4.79 billion to $4.82 billion and non GAAP EPS of $1.6 to $1.64 from its previous revenue estimate of $5 billion to $5.1 billion range and EPS estimate of $1.66 to $1.76. Analysts expected revenue of $5.0 billion and EPS of $1.68.

Symantec’s Competition

Symantec’s competitive advantage is its database of threat indicators that allows it to provide faster and better protection for customers. It is also pioneering solutions in markets such as cloud security, digital safety, advanced threat protection, identity protection, information protection, and cybersecurity services.

Its primary competitors are McAfee, Microsoft, and Trend Micro in security; Carbonite and Dell EMC in consumer backup offerings; Experian, Equifax, TransUnion, Affinion, EWS, Intersections, CSID, and LexisNexis in identity protection; Proofpoint and Microsoft in email security; SecureWorks and IBM in managed security services; McAfee, Zscaler, Forcepoint, and Cisco in web security gateway; Zscaler and Cisco in cloud security services; McAfee, IBM, Dell EMC, Palo Alto Networks, FireEye, Niksun, and Trend Micro in advanced threat protection and incident response, analytics, and forensics; and Riverbed and Cisco in WAN optimization.