Strategic Thinking on Symantec Acquisition
Last week, Symantec(NASDAQ:SYMC) acquired the security businesses of VeriSign (excluding iDefense). There have been tons of news reports and comments by market observers and analysts. In general, given that both negative and positive comments are valid, the below chart gave a different perspective to evaluate the acquisition strategy of Symantec.
It’s a 5 year stock price chart of Symantec, with comparison against that of CA(NASDAQ:CA), McAfee(NYSE:MFE), and Nasdaq.
The overall changes in 5 years are:
- Symantec down by: -35.14%
- CA down by: -30.60%
- McAfee up by: +21.87%
- while Nasdaq up by: +9.67%
At strategic level, both Symantec and CA have a long long product portfolio, mostly counting on acquisition of companies to expand, while McAfee keeps relatively compact product line, with focus on security businesses.
One additional point to mention for CA is that it suffered from the financial scandal and big chaos of management during 2004-2005. Taking this into account, Symantec submitted the worst scorecard to stakeholders from financial stand point. Isn’t there any connection between the scorecard and acquisition strategy? Doesn’t it give us any hint about Symantec’s acquisition strategy ? To keep focus and agile, or expand to cross the line, you have the choice.
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