"It's not your father's Oldsmobile, er, Symantec"
I beg to differ. I think that Symantec is headed much higher than your estimate. And Symantec is a morphing into a new kind of animal - other than a constant underachiever. The reasons are contained in the message that I just posted on Yahoo.
Symantec has been transitioning to a maintenance model and analysts are just picking up on it. NAV gets $4 per year per user. With 5 to 10 million upgrades a year, that works out to be $20 to $40 million a year. Liveupdate Pro costs $29.95 per year. With one million subscribers, it works out to $30 million every year. And note that these numbers grow as more units are sold. The power of this compounding is massive. Please not that Systemworks has only been sold since November so we should just see the beginning of the Liveupdate pro revenues this quarter. But in the subsequent quarters, this revenue stream will grow quickly.
Also note that the Corporate Sales revenues which could be under 30% just a year or so ago, are now threatening to rise up to the 50% level (they were 43% last quarter and SYMC has downplayed expectations on this front). Here again, Symantec is no longer the same old animal.
Also, please note that in most of June, NAV and Systemworks were #1 and #2 in retail sales of all software products. A year ago, SYMC was lucky to have one product in the top ten. With JT in charge, SYMC is no longer an easy mark for its competitors. With the free pc craze heating up and Mac sales zooming (SYMC earns much more per Mac than a PC), and only 33% of home computers in the US having AV software, this company can only be held back by the most incompetent of management. JT is not going to let that happen. So after 9 to 10 years of stagnation, let the good times roll.
As they say, "It's not your father's Oldsmobile, er, Symantec". Good luck to the longs. |
