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FireEye (FEYE) Plans to Change Corporate Name to Mandiant

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FireEye on Wednesday announced that it plans to change its corporate name to Mandiant Inc. at the annual Cyber Defense Summit (CDS) 2021 to be held on Oct 4. The cybersecurity solution provider’s Nasdaq ticker symbol will also change to MNDT and start trading on Oct 5.

FireEye’s latest move is pursuant to its pending asset and brand name sale agreement. Notably, on Jun 2, the company had announced that it will sell its product business, including the FireEye name, to a consortium led by the private-equity firm Symphony Technology Group (STG) in an all-cash transaction worth $1.2 billion.

The transaction will separate FireEye’s digital forensics and incident response arm, Mandiant, from its network, email, and cloud security products. With this transaction, the company undoes its 2014 acquisition, which brought Mandiant solutions and FireEye products together.

Markedly, FireEye had acquired Mandiant in 2014 for $1 billion and appointed the latter’s founder Kevin Mandia as the combined company’s CEO. The deal will make Mandiant an independent publicly-traded company focusing on cyber-incident response and the cybersecurity testing market.

Growing Traction of Mandiant Solutions

FireEye has been witnessing strong adoption of its Mandiant solutions. Notably, its MandiantConsulting services recorded 26% year-over-year revenue growth in the second quarter of 2021. Moreover, the overall Mandiant Solutions billings surged 44%, year on year, during the quarter.

The company had been focusing on expanding the capabilities of Mandiant. In this connection, it acquired Respond Software, a cybersecurity investigation automation company, in a cash-stock deal worth $186 million, last November.

The buyout integrated Respond’s cloud-based machine learning with Mandiant Advantage’s expertise to deliver automated investigation alerts at machine speed to customers.

Also, the acquisition of Respond Software has enabled Mandiant Advantage to include controls-agnostic AI-driven XDR capabilities, supported by the platform’s front-line intelligence, to help customers identify attacks and respond on time.

Further, the deal will help scale Mandiant’s existing Managed Defense resources by using cloud-based correlation and intelligent data science models to deliver faster and better security outcomes.

Earlier, in October 2020, the company unveiled the Mandiant Advantage Platform, which includes Threat Intelligence, Security Validation, Managed Defense, and Consulting services. Notably, the company recorded a 27% sequential increase in the Mandiant Advantage user community in second-quarter 2021.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

FireEye currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

Better-ranked stocks in the broader technology sector include Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) , Cadence Design Systems (CDNS - Free Report) , and NVIDIA (NVDA - Free Report) , all carrying a Zacks Rank of 2 (Buy), at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The long-term earnings growth rate for Microsoft, Cadence Design, and NVIDIA is currently pegged at 11.1%, 11.7%, and 17.7%, respectively.

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