Transaction expected to boost revenue in 2007
Transaction expected to boost revenue in 2007
Auckland, July 12, 2006 - Secure Computing Corporation (NASDAQ: SCUR), the experts in securing connections between people, applications and networks™, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire CipherTrust, Inc., the global leader in messaging security. CipherTrust®, a privately-held company, provides innovative layered security solutions to stop inbound messaging threats such as spam, viruses, intrusions and phishing, and protects against outbound policy and compliance violations associated with sensitive data leakage.
“Over the past few months, we have made excellent progress with the integration of CyberGuard,” said Eric Krieger Country Manager for New Zealand and Australia of Secure Computing. “With the brunt of the initial integration activity now behind us, we believe the time is right to continue investing in enterprise gateway security, which is experiencing strong growth. After an extensive review and due diligence process, we believe CipherTrust is the perfect addition to Secure Computing.”
“As threats and attacks move from targeting the network to targeting applications, companies are requiring application gateways with sophisticated content analysis capabilities,” said Krieger. “By combining the two companies, we will offer highly differentiated enterprise gateway security solutions that provides customers with integrated, multi-layer protection for messaging and web communication. As a result, we will be better positioned to help protect our customers’ most valuable asset – their data.”
“We will also be better positioned to offer our channel partners more innovative and profitable products to sell to their customers,” added Krieger. “CipherTrust’s unique reputation based security technology, TrustedSource, will further differentiate us by delivering the industry’s first reputation-based firewall/UTM, web gateway and identity and access management solution.”
To combat the real business risks posed by the growing number of messaging security threats, CipherTrust pioneered the messaging security appliance market and created an innovative, layered, policy-based appliance to protect multiple communication channels, including email, instant messaging, Webmail, file transfers and HTTP. CipherTrust’s family of products are created to meet the specific needs of organizations of all types and enable those organizations to reduce costs and mitigate the risks that are associated with all forms of electronic messaging.
Secure Computing is purchasing CipherTrust for total consideration of US$273.6 million, which is comprised of US$185 million in cash, 10 million shares of Secure Computing common stock, and a US$10 million seller note that is subject to certain performance obligations. As a result of the transaction, CipherTrust shareholders will have an approximate 14% ownership position in Secure Computing.
Under the terms of the agreement, Secure Computing has obtained a commitment for a senior secured credit facility from Citigroup. The facility comprises a US$115 million term loan and a US$20 million revolving credit facility. The transaction is expected to close by September 8, 2006, subject to any necessary regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
Depending on the closing day of the transaction, Secure Computing expects CipherTrust to add approximately US$15 million to US$20 million in revenue in 2006, and approximately $80 million in revenue in 2007. The transaction is expected to be breakeven with respect to pro-forma earnings per share by mid-2007 and accretive to pro-forma earnings per share in the second half of 2007.
Secure Content Management Appliance market growth
According to IDC, the Secure Content Management
Appliance market is expected to grow to US$1.7 billion in
2009, a 47% CAGR from 2004 through 2009. In the Messaging
Security sub-market, IDC expects this area to grow to US$2.6
billion in 2009, a 31% CAGR from 2004 through
2009.
CipherTrust is the current leader (based on 2004 revenues) in the Secure Content Management Appliance market with 20% market share. Also as part of the transaction, Secure Computing will become well-positioned in the Messaging Security Market. According to IDC data, CipherTrust is currently the clear market leader in messaging security gateway appliances.
Appliances are becoming the preferred method of deploying security applications within the Enterprise, and IDC estimates that 80% of all network security solutions will be delivered via a dedicated appliance by 2007.
Transaction Combines Two Well-Positioned Companies in the IT Security Industry
• Leader in Enterprise Gateway Security
The combined company will be positioned to be the leader in the enterprise gateway appliances market. This will include a comprehensive, integrated and unified portfolio of solutions – ranging from UTM, messaging security, Web filtering and identity management – with centralized policy and management capabilities. Together, these products will address network gateway and application gateway security for all the major Internet protocols including Web (HTTP and FTP), email (SMTP and POP) and instant messaging and identity based access protection.
• Expanded Product
Portfolio
Combined, Secure Computing and CipherTrust
bring a common focus and highly innovative approach to
security. Secure Computing’s UTM and SCM appliances
provide the full range of content protection features with
world-class firewall, VPN, Web-filtering, and content
filtering. CipherTrust’s appliances provide total
messaging security for inbound threats as well as outbound
data leakage and compliance violations. Customers will no
longer need to deploy and manage multiple disparate point
products from multiple vendors.
• Reputation Based
Security with Global Intelligence
Central to Secure
Computing’s technology focus is the ability of its
Sidewinder G2®, TSP and Webwasher® platforms to enable
behaviour-based “Zero-Day” attack prevention against
previously unknown network attacks. CipherTrust extends
this capability using global intelligence with its
TrustedSource™ technology, providing the leading
reputation system based upon real-time intelligence gathered
from a worldwide network of thousands of sensors. Together,
the combined company will be able to integrate the
TrustedSource capability into these products to accurately
protect against unknown threats.
• Greater Opportunity
to Utilize Worldwide Distribution Channel
The transaction
will provide the opportunity to accelerate CipherTrust’s
revenue growth by utilizing Secure Computing’s worldwide
distribution channel. In particular, CipherTrust’s
products will receive greater exposure with the U.S. Federal
Government and in internationally.
Together, the combined company will have more than 18,000 customers and 1,700 resellers in 106 countries. The company also will have greater opportunities to cross-sell all of its innovative products, including its Unified Threat Management and Identity and Access Management appliances to both current and prospective customers.
• Stronger
Organisation with Complementary Skill-Sets and Substantial
Industry Expertise
Together, Secure Computing will have
an organization of highly dedicated professionals with
substantial expertise in the security industry. Jay
Chaudhry, CEO, chairman and founder of CipherTrust will join
Secure Computing as the Chief Strategy Officer and two
CipherTrust executives will become executive officers and
members to the company’s senior leadership team. Paul
Judge will join the company as Chief Technology Officer, and
Atri Chatterjee will be appointed Senior Vice President of
Marketing.
The sales and marketing groups consist of security industry veterans, and the expected synergies between these organizations are expected to be powerful. The company will have a substantially larger research and engineering development team, and will be well-positioned to accelerate its development of new and innovative solutions.
Ends