Secure Computings Bid for Security
Secure Computings bid for security is pushing its investors to their limits. Largely using debt, the company is making its second large acquisition in the year, in the hopes to create the future of security and turn profits around 180 degrees.
By Tuesday afternoon it had already been a rough week for John McNulty. The chief executive of Secure Computing (SCUR) was feeling anything but secure as he got on a conference call with investors to tell them he was buying Alpharetta (Ga.) CipherTrust for $273 million—largely using debt, since his company had only about $100 million in the bank and a market share not much bigger than the size of the deal. It had been less than a year since Secure Computing took a private equity investment from Warburg Pincus to help buy another security company, CyberGuard, for $295 million.
I really adore Secure Computing, especially their Sidewinder G2 firewall package. While it is priced extremely high, it does offer the best protection available today. I will be closely watching to see what the company is capable of producing after all the mergers.