Dell subsidiary SecureWorks files to go public
18 Dec 2015
Dell subsidiary SecureWorks today filed to go public amid rising losses despite a rise in revenue. Dell was a public company, when it acquired SecureWorks in 2011 for a reported $612 million.
In October, TechCrunch reported that SecureWorks had filed for an IPO privately.
Commentators point out that Dell went private, and it was buying EMC, which would perhaps remain partially public, while another company SecureWorks was being spun off.
They add that the SecureWorks IPO had two interesting components - its increasing rate of losses, and its place in the larger Dell-EMC transaction.
After one of the largest technological acquisitions in history, Dell SecureWorks would go public to raise funds, with the parent company Dell filing an IPO.
The new entity would be welcomed under the name of SCWX, by the stock market according to commentators.
Dell, which counts among the biggest manufacturers and distributors of technology-based products, made SecureWorks its subsidiary back in 2011, for the total price of $612 million.
Though the Atlanta-based company SecureWorks was expected to rake in massive profits for its parent, it suffered heavy losses in 2015.
SecureWorks could be imagined as an IT guard dog, a cyber security service meant to protect small or large companies against malware and hackers.
The IT infrastructure protection was achieved through the use of online cloud, with monthly subscription access. The company counts over 4,000 clients from 85 countries benefiting from it at this point. On a daily basis the firm analyses around 150 billion events that posed a threat to its clients corporation infrastructure.
Following an increase in revenue, racking up $245 million through October of this year, SecureWorks showed significant improvement, as against the same period of last year's revenue, $190 million. But with its gross margin of $111.3 million the company still suffered a net loss of $57 million in sales and marketing.
The move to take SecureWorks public, and allowing its shares to be traded in on the stock market, is due to Dell's acquisition of EMC. The $67 billion mega deal would bring subsidiary VMWare alongside its parent company EMC under the Dell umbrella, once everything got sorted out.