Cybersecurity giant McAfee Corp. has filed for an initial public offering that will return it to the stock market after a decade-long hiatus and allow it to pursue more strategic acquisitions.

McAfee generated net revenue of $1.4 billion in the six months through June 27, according to the IPO filing that the company made public Monday. That’s up from $1.29 billion in the first half of 2019.

McAfee’s bottom line has also improved this year: The company turned the $236 million loss it logged in 2019 into net income of $31 million during the same six-month period.

McAfee provides a broad array of cybersecurity software products for both consumers and enterprises. It has also a sizable government business, with public sector customers accounting for a quarter of its largest customers according to the filing.

On the consumer side, McAfee sells antivirus software and other device protection tools that were installed on more than 600 million devices as of June 27. The company’s consumer sales strategy relies heavily on partnerships it has established over the years with computer makers and internet service providers.

McAfee is also a force to be reckoned with in the enterprise security market, where it counts 78% of the Fortune 500  and 86% of the Global 2000 as customers. The company’s Mvision enterprise product portfolio provides tools for protecting employee devices from hacking attempts. It also includes a growing lineup of solutions for securing backend assets such as public cloud deployments and workloads deployed in containers.

McAfee built out its enterprise portfolio partly through acquisitions. The company picked up Light Point Security LLC earlier this year to acquire its browser isolation technology for protecting employee devices, after earlier buying container security specialist NanoSec Co. and Sequoia-based cloud security startup Skyhigh Networks. Going public public could give McAfee access to more capital for strategic acquisitions.

“We will continue to pursue targeted acquisitions and believe we are well positioned to successfully execute on our acquisition strategy by leveraging our scale, global reach and routes to market, and data assets,” the company wrote in its IPO prospectus. 

McAfee’s filing states that it’s looking to raise $100 million, a figure often used as a placeholder before the fundraising target is disclosed. 

The IPO is poised to return McAfee to public markets about a decade after Intel Corp. took it private in a $7.6 billion acquisition. Intel, which still owns 49% of the company according to the filing, sold a controlling stake to TPG Capital in 2017. Private equity firm Thoma Bravo joined the fray as well in 2019 by acquiring a minority stake. 

McAfee is set to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol MCFE. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC are acting as lead book-running managers.

Photo: McAfee