Cisco today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Sourcefire, a intelligent cybersecurity solutions provider. The acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of each company.
- Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay $76 per share in cash in exchange for each share of Sourcefire and assume outstanding equity awards for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $2.7 billion, including retention-based incentives.
- Cisco revealed via an official press release that it expects the acquisition to be slightly dilutive to non-GAAP earnings in fiscal year 2014 due to normal purchase accounting adjustments and integration costs.
- Once the transaction closes, Cisco will include Sourcefire into its guidance going forward and Sourcefire employees will join the Cisco Security Group led by Christopher Young.
- Prior to the close, Cisco and Sourcefire will continue to operate as separate companies. The acquisition is expected to close during the second half of calendar year 2013.
– Christopher Young, SVP, Cisco Security Group.
With this acquisition, Cisco and Sourcefire will combine their products and technologies to provide “continuous and pervasive advanced threat protection across the entire attack continuum and from any device to any cloud.”
Sourcefire will add a team with deep security DNA to Cisco and will accelerate delivery of Cisco’s security strategy of defending, discovering, and remediating advanced threats.
“The notion of the ‘perimeter’ no longer exists and today’s sophisticated threats are able to circumvent traditional, disparate security products. Organizations require continuous and pervasive advanced threat protection that addresses each phase of the attack continuum,” said Christopher Young, senior vice president, Cisco Security Group.
“With the acquisition of Sourcefire, we believe our customers will benefit from one of the industry’s most comprehensive, integrated security solutions – one that is simpler to deploy, and offers better security intelligence,” he added.
“Cisco’s acquisition of Sourcefire will help accelerate the realization of our vision for a new model of security across the extended network,” said Martin Roesch, Founder and chief technology officer, Sourcefire.
“We’re excited about the opportunities ahead to expand our footprint via Cisco’s global reach, as well as Cisco’s commitment to support our pace of innovation in both commercial markets and the open source community,” he added.
Cisco and Sourcefire plan to host a joint investor call on July 23 at 6:00 a.m. PDT/9:00 a.m. EDT to discuss the proposed transaction. Conference call number is toll free 1-888-788-8648 or international 1-517-308-9239.
Speakers will include:
- Hilton Romanski, vice president, Corporate Development, Cisco.
- Christopher Young, senior vice president, Security Group, Cisco.
- Martin Roesch, founder and chief technology officer, Sourcefire.
Conference call replay will be available via Cisco’s Investor Relations website and at toll free 1-888-562-6119 or international 1-203-369-3186 approximately one hour after the conclusion of the event.
Earlier this year, Cisco partnered with NetApp to unify branch bffice, data center and public cloud with FlexPod Architecture.