Sources: Symantec in talks to sell web certificate business, which it bought from Verisign for $1.28B in 2010, for $1B+
3 MIN READ — (Reuters) - Cybersecurity firm Symantec Corp (SYMC.O) is considering selling its website certification business, in a deal that could fetch …
Context & Ripple Effects
The web certificate unit is a leftover from Symantec's conglomerate era: it paid Verisign $1.28B for the business in 2010, and a sale at $1B+ would mean exiting below cost seven years later. The talks fit a longer dismantling — Symantec already explored selling its Veritas data-storage business in 2015, then rebuilt around security by buying Blue Coat for $4.65B in 2016, with Blue Coat CEO Greg Clark taking over as CEO.
The arc continued after this report: the certificate business went to DigiCert for about $950M up front plus a 30% stake in the combined company per the announced DigiCert acquisition, and by 2019 Broadcom was in advanced talks to acquire Symantec itself before settling on its $10B enterprise business purchase. This story is the middle chapter of Symantec being taken apart piece by piece.
First-order effects
- Symantec would book a loss on an asset bought for $1.28B in 2010 while clearing the portfolio of everything outside its post-Blue Coat enterprise-security focus under Greg Clark.
Second-order effects
- A sale concentrates the web PKI/certificate market in a specialist buyer's hands rather than inside a diversified security vendor, and the cash-plus-stake structure reported in the eventual DigiCert deal shows sellers taking equity in consolidators, not just checks.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — Veritas shed, certificates shed, then the enterprise unit sold to Broadcom — the endpoint is large security acquirers being broken into focused businesses traded between specialists, with conglomerate-era bundles proving worth less assembled than apart.
The trend: Security conglomerates formed through serial acquisitions are being unbundled, with legacy units sold to specialists ahead of whole-company breakups.