McAfee underwhelms on return to stock exchange

Security vendor valued at just under $8bn

McAfee endured an underwhelming return to life as a public company, seeing its share price drop 6.5 per cent on its first day of trading.

The cybersecurity vendor raised $740m by selling 37 million shares on Wednesday, ahead of its return to the Nasdaq market yesterday.

It's valuation stood at just under $8bn when the market closed.

McAfee is now publicly listed for the first time since 2010, with Intel taking the firm private for around $7.7bn.

Intel later sold it private equity firm TPG.

Last week McAfee revealed its reliance on distributors, with Ingram Micro, Arrow and Tech Data accounting for 15 per cent, seven per cent and six per cent of sales respectively.

A recent SEC filing revealed that McAfee was turning over $1.9bn in net revenue when it was acquired by Intel in 2011.

Sales had grown to $2.6bn in 2019, against a net loss of $236m.