How does Cylance's revenue stack up against its competitors'?

BlackBerry reveals that recently acquired business saw sales rise 24 per cent year on year

End-point security vendor Cylance saw sales rise 24 per cent to $51m (£41.3m) in its Q2, parent company BlackBerry has revealed.

BlackBerry announced the acquisition of the next-gen security poster boy at the end of last year, and now reveals its revenue as part of the Canadian firm's wider earnings reporting.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen said the sales growth was driven by a 22 per cent increase in the number of customers with active subscriptions.

He highlighted financial services, manufacturing and professional services as particularly prominent industries.

BlackBerry's acquisition of Cylance surprised many in the industry, particularly given the relatively low fee of $1.4bn. Until the acquisition Cylance had never revealed its revenue figures.

Chen also revealed that Cylance founder Stuart McClure has resigned.

"I would have wanted him to stay longer, but he made a personal decision which we have to respect," the CEO said.

Cylance made a racket when it launched a few years ago, claiming its technology would quickly displace the solutions provided by legacy vendors. But monitoring its progress in the market was tricky because it did not reveal numbers.

We've measured Cylance's revenue against the most recently reported quarterly sales of other vendors in the enterprise end-point security market.

Cylance's chief operating officer Daniel Doimo has now been promoted to president, to replace McClure - who has followed a number of senior execs out the door since the acquisition.

On an earnings call, BlackBerry boss Chen commented on VMware's proposed $2.1bn acquisition of Carbon Black, saying the move validates the market and BlackBerry's strategy.

"First of all, for any of you - and maybe none of you - who thought that we paid too much for Cylance, we actually paid the lowest multiple of all," he said.

"Carbon Black is pretty much the same size as Cylance and we paid $1.4bn. So that tells you one thing.

"Secondly, the more important [thing is] it really is a good validation of the strategy of this whole end-point security market we are seeing.

"Customers want one platform now, they don't want multiple platforms. They don't want to do the integration. And they want to have anywhere from the MDM all the way to the end-point security and antiviral software, all in one platform, one console, one agent, one cloud."

Chen said that BlackBerry's resources and investment are mainly going into Cylance because the company is still yet to turn a profit.

"We're hiring a lot of people, especially in sales, both in ESS (enterprise software services) and Cylance," he added.

"We are spending as much as we possibly can, but not losing money. And that's kind of the operating principle or guidelines and keeping a positive cashflow whenever we can."

BlackBerry's overall sales rose 22 per cent year on year to $261m but fell short of analyst expectations.

The vendor's share price fell by more than a quarter this week.