Symantec to Split into Two Companies | Hacker News Reader

Symantec to Split into Two Companies

dealbook.nytimes.com

29 pointscodelion37 comments

Interesting that they're basically unwinding the acquisition of Veritas from 2004 by splitting up into two companies.

The only difference is that $11B has disappeared from the combined companies market cap in 10 years.

I know people who worked at symantec before, during, and after the merger, abd apparently the merger really ruined the symantec corporate culture. I heard veritas promoted a ton of people to VP level right before the merger so they could "have more voice" or something.

And they would like to nominate Oracle, IBM and Microsoft to take this challenge within the next 24 hours ...

The two company challenge.

Why not Apple?

It's astonishing how much capital Apple is just doing nothing with. What a colossal waste.

I'm sure Apple has 100% of their "cash" invested. No businessman stores money in Scrooge McDuck cash vault.

In order for a business to invest that "cash" in their own business, it needs to be a better investment than whatever else it had been invested in.

I'm sure w1ntermute knows this.

The common complaint about apple is that they're not expanding/diversifying their business more with their available capital.

Not that they're doing nothing with a literal pile of cash.

Obviously, most of it is not literally cash, but it is in highly liquid investments like t-bills, that have a near zero rate of return, so it is not very productively invested.

Why would Apple make unproductive investments of its cash? With that amount of money, Apple is going to have a high level executive whose job is to productively invest it. He'll likely be investing it in securities like stocks that provide a good return and are highly liquid.

This return rate is termed "opportunity cost", i.e. if Apple were to invest it in Apple's business it needs to return a higher rate than the opportunity cost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

As of last quarter they had almost $13 billion in cash and cash equivalents[1]. Unless they are defrauding their shareholders, that money cannot be invested in stocks.

[1] http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=AAPL

"Cash equivalents" include "marketable securities":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_and_cash_equivalents

which include "equities" which include common stocks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_(finance)

So, it may very well and likely is invested in stocks. It is hardly sitting idle.

> Another important condition a cash equivalent needs to satisfy is that the investment should have insignificant risk of change in value; thus, common stock cannot be considered a cash equivalent

"Marketable securities" is an extremely broad category. Some marketable securities are cash equivalents, but common stocks are not. Their value is too volatile to be considered a cash equivalent.

To qualify as a cash equivalent, an asset must have very little chance of decreasing in value. Such assets tend to have very low return on investment.

Yet the Wikipedia article says they are cash equivalent - that a cash equivalent is one where the investment is quickly convertible to cash. Common stocks qualify, and are explicitly listed in the article as qualifying.

I find it extremely improbable that a sophisticated company like Apple would let $13 billion sit around in an unproductive investment. If you can quote an accounting rule that says "cash equivalents" cannot be common stock, I'd like to see it.

The wikipedia article you linked explicitly says that common stock is not a cash equivalent. I just quoted a sentence that says common stock is not a cash equivalent. Here it is again since you missed it the first time:

> Another important condition a cash equivalent needs to satisfy is that the investment should have insignificant risk of change in value; thus, common stock cannot be considered a cash equivalent

The other wiki article did list it.

In any case, preferred stock is listed, which are productive investments.

You mean the securities article? Of course it did. Common stock is a security. It is not a cash equivalent. Preferred stock is only a cash equivalent if it is within three months of its redemption date, at which point the market value will be very close to the value at maturity.

they are waiting for a tax amnesty.

That's precisely why Apple is executing an aggressive share buyback.

No, that means that they have no idea what to do with the money.

I think it shows their restraint and focus as a company. They only want to do things extremely well and in a way that gives them total control over that market segment. If you haven't found your next target, and the stuff you do have is selling like crazy, might as well pile up the money while you search for the next thing. Spending money stabbing in the dark at every market doesn't fit their model and tarnishes the brand.

IBM did split already. Maybe you've heard of Lenovo?

The way I understood it, Lenovo bought the IP (and some staff) for product lines they were already building on IBMs behalf- this is hardly the same as the current situation.

That is incorrect. IBM sold parts of its hardware business, along with employees and IP rights, to Lenovo. Years ago, IBM also sold its ThinkPad brand to Lenovo. The two companies are not exactly related to one another.

Everything with IBM it's some strange act of financial engineering.

Everyone who worked in the PC division of IBM essentially worked for Lenovo one day. They used the same people, processes, part numbers, etc for many years. Lexmark was the same story a few years earlier.

The only change was that the IBM account exec that plays golf with your CEO didn't give as shit about PCs anymore.

Who'll be the first to split and then announce that they're unsplitting, or that it was a mistake?

EMC not keen on being separated from VMware, http://www.crn.com/news/storage/300074366/emc-files-muted-re...

Ebay and HP also said the same thing before announcing their split.

Splitting EMC and VMware doesn't make as much sense as eBay/PayPal or HP/HP, since EMC and VMware have pretty much identical customer bases. HP Consumer and HP Enterprise have of course mutually exclusive customer bases, and eBay and PayPal have some overlap but not much.

EMC is basically the brand name of VMware's storage products.

Most of EMC's current value is thought to be based on VMWare. So they've always been hesitant to sell VMWare as a result.

Apparently the VMware-Cisco SDN competition is hurting EMC-Cisco storage partnerships.

" HP Consumer and HP Enterprise have of course mutually exclusive customer bases"

I would have thought there was a lot of overlap. Don't people who have HP Laptops/Desktops and Printers also have HP Servers?

There is, except that there it's no money in PCs anymore, and print is a low/no growth business.

With all of these split happening in such a cluster - there is likely some economic, tax, financial or other environmental reason stimulating such activity. Anyone care to hazard a guess what it might be?

... Because security and information management is totally unrelated.

IM means Products like Netbackup and Backup Exec, Enterprise vault. Which are extreemly different than security.

Extremely? You don't think things like backups, enterprise storage etc has any need for security mechanisms as well as information security management (policy, access control etc)?

If you do, we live on very different worlds.

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