McAfee Rides Intel Acquisition Excitement To Record Highs

McAfee did not host an earnings call to discuss its financial results, due to the pending acquisition by Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel.

"Our performance accelerated throughout the year and we ended the fourth quarter achieving very strong record results," said Dave DeWalt, McAfee president and CEO, in a statement. "As we enter 2011, the momentum we have in our business serves as strong validation of our strategy and the confidence that our customers, partners and employees have in the proposed combination of McAfee and Intel. We remain very comfortable with our ability as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intel to effectively drive innovation in the security industry for years to come."

In the fourth quarter, McAfee revenue hit $549.6 million, a 5 percent increase over the same quarter the previous year. For full-year 2010, McAfee reported revenue of nearly $2.1 billion, a jump of 7 percent over 2009.

McAfee's revenue rally comes nearly two weeks after the Intel-McAfee merger received approval from the European Commission, a major hurdle that required the chipmaker to promise to play fair with rival security vendors and let them leverage its CPUs and chipsets in the same fashion in which McAfee will utilize them.

The Intel-McAfee deal already received approval by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in late 2010.

Announced in August, Intel's pending acquisition of McAfee would make the world's No. 2 endpoint security vendor a wholly owned subsidiary of the mammoth chipmaker, which would wrap McAfee into its software and services group. Intel CEO Paul Otellini said that Intel intends to preserve McAfee's existing business model, sales practices, terms and conditions, products and branding.

And while the acquisition isn't expected to close until the end of the first quarter, Intel expects to have Intel-McAfee integrated products available as soon as early this year.

DeWalt said McAfee expects to continue its momentum and maintain its spot among the top security vendors as embraces new security technologies, including cloud computing.

"Looking forward we expect to continue to define the marketplace with our comprehensive portfolio of endpoint, network and cloud-based security technologies. With the proliferation of IP connected devices and continued growth in the security threat landscape, McAfee is very well positioned to further expand the global reach of our security protection driven by growth trends in mobility, virtualization and embedded devices," DeWalt said in the statement.