McAfee Enterprise Security Business Grows as Company Stays Upbeat on the Future

McAfee beat market expectations and posted 27 percent year-over-year revenue growth in the third quarter of 2008.

All together, the company posted $410 million in revenue in the quarter—largely on the back of its corporate business division. The division’s revenues grew 33 percent year over year to $247 million. McAfee officials credited the growth to the success of Total Protection Endpoint for Enterprise, Data Protection and McAfee's Network Security Platform, formerly known as IntruShield.

In the consumer business, revenue grew 20 percent compared with the same period last year, reaching $163 million.

"We achieved double-digit, year-over-year revenue growth across our five geographic markets and both corporate and consumer segments,” said Dave DeWalt, McAfee's CEO, in a statement. “We continued to see robust demand across our portfolio of security solutions. In particular, McAfee Network Security Platform, formerly known as IntruShield, grew sales more than 100 percent over last year's third quarter."

McAfee was upbeat about the upcoming quarter, even as the economy continues to struggle and security rival Symantec shared a more cautious outlook during its earnings call. McAfee officials predicted fourth-quarter earnings of 50 cents to 56 cents per share, excluding items, on revenue of between $400 million to $420 million.

It was a busy quarter for the company, which announced a number of new products as well as plans to purchase Secure Computing.

"The planned acquisition of Secure Computing, expected to close in this quarter, should extend the success of our Total Protection strategy … [and] underscores our commitment to providing customers with critical protection that interlocks the endpoint and network, and we expect it to strengthen McAfee's leadership position in security risk management," DeWalt said.