Facebook to purchase a security company? Which companies make sense and which don’t?
Three popular options I’ve heard about:
Palo Alto
Checkpoint
Fire-Eye
First idea is valuations of each company? How much would FB have to pay for them?
PANW = $17B
CP = $17B
FEYE = $4B
Second idea is which company is performing well?
I am a consultant in cyber security and work with a variety of customers. So what are customers saying?
Palo Alto - Palo has been making a non-stop list of solid acquisitions. Impressive startups that are producing real technology, such as RedLock. To me that says Palo is not in panic mode, but is in the offensive position of acquiring the best startups before anyone else can.
Checkpoint - Kind of shit. I haven’t seen anything or heard anyone talk about something Checkpoint has done great in what feels like forever.
Fire Eye - If I said Checkpoint was shit, well Fire Eye is in the real shitter. I haven’t seen anyone buying FireEye in forever and the tech is aging quickly. Nothing they do is impressive anymore. Few of solid talent work at Fire Eye anymore, so execution will only continue to suffer.
Third and most important idea is which company has a service offering that FB needs?
This leaves one real company. Fire Eye. A few years ago FireEye acquired one of the top consulting firms in the US, Mandiant. The guys from Mandiant that still work at FireEye speak proudly of the Mandiant name and will make sure you know they “work” for Mandiant and not FireEye.
Results:Fire Eye is my prediction. The price at $4B to buy the entire kit and kaboodle seems cheap to acquire an entire development team and services team to slot into the FB security team. With that, I’ve put my money where my mouth is and put $1,500 on FEYE stock a couple weeks ago at $17.08 per share. Mostly just to goof off with my friends. I have no intention of “beating” the stock market. This is pure speculation/gambling. Just as some might enjoy Blackjack in Vegas, I enjoy trying to guess what cyber security companies are going to do next and this is one of those scenarios. But just talking about whats going to happen and actually believing in the bullshit I spew, I figured I needed to put my money on the table if I really believed my prediction. If you are more stupid than I, you could buy $1,500 in options and actually make some money if your prediction is right.