Cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. announced record fourth-quarter revenue today and said that it could top $1 billion in sales for the first time in 2021.

The company reported a profit before certain costs such as stock compensation of 12 cents per share on revenue of $248 million, up 5% from a year ago. That was better than expected, with Wall Street modeling earnings of 10 cents per share on revenue of $240 million.

FireEye Chief Executive Kevin Mandia (pictured) said the company is well-positioned at a time when enterprises are shifting to “intelligence-led security.”

“Our record fourth-quarter and 2020 results demonstrated that we are gaining momentum in our Platform, Cloud Subscription, Managed Services and Professional services categories,” Mandia said.

FireEye reported annualized recurring revenue of $638 million, up 8% from one year ago. Platform, cloud subscription and managed services annualized recurring revenue came to $340 million, up 20%.

The CEO added that FireEye’s cloud-based services and intelligence consulting now make up two-thirds of the company’s revenue, which means those segments have surpassed its on-premises revenues for the first time.

FireEye hit the headlines quite a few times during the quarter, most notably falling victim to an attack in December committed by what the company suspects was “state-sponsored hackers.” The attackers reportedly targeted and accessed FireEye Red Team tools used to test customer security. The tools accessed by the hackers mimic the behavior of threat actors and are used by FireEye to provide diagnostic security services to their customers.

The company said at the time it couldn’t be sure if the attackers intended to use the Red Team tools to hack someone else, or to publicly disclose them. But as a precaution it created a number of countermeasures for customers to use in order to protect themselves from being hacked by those tools.

In November, FireEye announced a substantial $400 million investment from the private equity firm Blackstone Group, which helped its stock price jump by 17%. It then used some of that money to buy a company called Respond Software Inc., which sells an “eXtended Detection and Response” platform that’s used for cyberattack investigations and responses. FireEye said it plans to integrate Respond’s platform with its new Mandiant Advantage offering, which is a software-as-a-service-based threat intelligence tool that was released in October.

Mandia said he had high hopes for Mandiant Advantage. “Our vision is to become a seamless extension of our customers’ security operations by delivering our threat intelligence and expertise gained on the frontlines through the Mandiant Advantage platform,” he said.

For the first quarter, FireEye said it’s expecting earnings of between 5 and 7 cents per share on revenue of $235 million to $238 million. Wall Street had forecast earnings of 7 cents per share on revenue of $233.7 million.

For the full year, FireEye is modeling earnings of 35 to 37 cents per share on revenue of between $990 million and $1.01 billion, just ahead of Wall Street’s estimate of 35 cents per share in earnings and $987.7 million in revenue.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE that 2020 was a whirlwind year for security firms, and that FireEye and its investors will be disappointed it did not manage to participate in the uptick in demand for security services, with its full year professional services revenue growing by just 6%.

“FireEye did manage to reduce its losses though, which merits credit, with cost cutting across the board,” Mueller said. “But another concern pops up in its R&D cuts, which were larger than cuts to its sales and marketing and general expenses. The good news is that FireEye is optimistic it can crack the $1 billion revenue mark, so all eyes are on its first quarter results.”

Photo: SiliconANGLE