Symantec nabs anti-spam firm Brightmail for $370m

Security firm Symantec is planning to pay $370m to acquire anti-spam and email filtering company Brightmail.

Brightmail, which filed the preliminary paperwork for an initial public offering in March, reported a net income of about $1.1m on revenue of $26m in 2003, compared with a net loss of $5.2m on revenues of $12.1m in 2002, according to its US Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Once known mostly for its Norton antivirus tools, Symantec is expanding to provide a variety of security software, services and hardware. To this end, it has made a number of acquisitions in the past two years, including SafeWeb and On Technology.

Symantec invested in Brightmail in 2000 and holds approximately 11 per cent of the company's stock.

In its fourth fiscal quarter, ended 2 April, Symantec reported a net profit of $117m, or 35 cents a share. That compares with a profit of $68m, or 21 cents a share, a year ago.

Analysts on average had expected Symantec to post a net profit of 34 cents a share, according to research firm Thomson First Call.

Revenue, meanwhile, climbed to $556m in the quarter, up 43 per cent from a year ago.

Michael Kanellos writes for CNET News.com