Avast acquires antivirus maker AVG for $1.3BN to gain scale and dive into IoT security

[tomm]

 

Security giant Avast has announced it intends to acquire fellow Czech-based antivirus software maker AVG for a purchase price of $25.00 per share in cash — resulting in a transaction that will total around $1.3 billion.

 

Avast intends to finance the transaction using cash balances it holds, along with committed debt financing from third party lenders.

 

The deal is aimed at gaining scale and geographical breadth, Avast said today. It also wants to build out its security offerings with an eye on emerging growth opportunities such as in the Internet of Things, as well as on serve existing customers with “more advanced” products.

 

IoT has been dubbed a security nightmare for consumers, given the accelerating trend for network connectivity to be pushed into all sorts of devices — often by companies with little or no security expertise. But the opening up of this vast new front of potential vulnerabilities is clearly also an opportunity for experienced security players to step in and address.

 

Organization efficiencies are also expected as a result of the acquisition, so presumably there will be some staff reductions owing to duplicate roles.

 

On this, a spokeswoman for Avast said: “We haven’t started planning the team integration yet. Over the next months we will be analyzing and planning the organizations, but can’t speak to any potential staff reductions until after that.”

 

Avast notes that the combined user-base of the two companies will result in an entity with a network of more than 400 million endpoints, of which 160 million are mobile — so that means not just more customers but broader access to intel on malware which it will feed into building out the next waves of its personal security and privacy products.

 

“We are in a rapidly changing industry, and this acquisition gives us the breadth and technological depth to be the security provider of choice for our current and future customers,” said Vince Steckler, chief executive officer of Avast Software, in a statement.

 

“We believe that joining forces with Avast, a private company with significant resources, fully supports our growth objectives and represents the best interests of our stockholders,” added Gary Kovacs, chief executive officer, AVG. “Our new scale will allow us to accelerate investments in growing markets and continue to focus on providing comprehensive and simple-to-use solutions for consumers and businesses, alike.

 

“As the definition of online security continues to shift from being device-centric, to being concerned with devices, data and people, we believe the combined company, with the strengthened value proposition, will emerge as a leader in this growing market.”

 

Avast’s spokeswoman confirmed the AVG brand will not be disappearing, saying the company will use a combination of the two brands owing to associated strengths in different markets.

 

The purchase price of AVG represents a 33 per cent premium over the July 6, 2016 closing price and a premium of 32 per cent over the average volume weighted price per share over the past six months.

 

The contemplated tender offer — of either 95 per cent or 80 per cent of AVG shares, the latter depending on shareholders approving an asset sale — will be subject to the receipt of regulatory clearances, it notes.

 

The transaction is expected to close sometime between September 15 and October 15, 2016, depending on the timing of regulatory review.

 

The Source

[VileTouch]

buy up the competition, become bigger. but i don't thing even this will help avast shake up it's bad rep.

[Karabasas]

In general PC's and windows software is disappearing fast, what's the point is spending loads on mediocre developer, abandoning free'ish products to hardly ever to get money back?

[TheMountain]

[Batu69]

Moved from Software News forum.

[pc71520]

http://www.neowin.net/news/avast-to-acquire-its-security-rival-avg-for-13-billion

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/avast-announces-agreement-acquire-avg-063000656.html

 

https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/07/avast-acquires-antivirus-maker-avg-for-1-3bn-to-gain-scale-and-dive-into-iot-security/

[niTe_RiDeR_Pr0]

 Thats awesome

Thanks for the news dude

[D1v1n3D]

1.3 billion and the average world is losing money and starting to starve and it is only going to get worse specially once Hillary crooked Clinton takes office the world corruption is to strong panama papers proves world leaders and other elites are in bed with each-other almost every country leader politicians and so forth like crime bosses and mafia's are driven by greed and power, we are all turning to modern day slaves with a dead end job that we all can lose in a heart beat and eventually in the next 10 to 20 years almost all jobs will be done by some kind of robot/machine if we do not have ww3 after USA civil war/ revolutionary war 2.

[TheMountain]

 

[steven36]

2 hours ago, D1v1n3D said:

Hillary crooked Clinton

What do a politician  from the USA  got to do with the 2nd and 3rd biggest  Antivirus companies  in the world that are Czech based?  nothing really, nice rant though  .  It may have some barring on the biggest provider Microsoft and cause the Czech based to gain stock . Most people don't pay for security software they never have .Back when there was just AVG Free people used it more than anything else  and you could easy get infected it would tell you it found  a virus but it couldn't remove the Virus  so you had to reformat to remove it  . People used it because it was free and not based on if it could remove a Virus..  because it couldn't .

[Holmes]

I think this is good news avast is good and avg is ok avast could make avg better.  Most people dont pay for security software because its online and they can get it for free (by downloading a trial and installing a fix from nsane to get it for as long as they want).  I would like to see the stats on what people use the most avg free or avast free?  Only products like hitman pro tell you if you have a virus but wont fix it for free.  I remember back in the day when me and my brother got our first computer and it got infected with a virus rootkit using the file wininit.dll.  My brother tried to get rid of it and I dont know if he did or not but that virus is old now its easier to remove a virus now then it was back then.  There is better security now then there was back then i didnt have half my tools in my tech tools back then.

[TheMountain]

Actually I feel safer bucking the real-time AV trend & switched to manually scanning files. It's easy to know where to initially look for unwantables; downloads & temp files / folders. Run MBAM-Portable every once in a while. Upload files to Metascan & VirusTotal. 

 

If I did use real-time AV, AVG & Avast won't be included on this tiny list. 

[KamenRiderBlack]

On 7/7/2016 at 7:51 PM, Karabasas said:

In general PC's and windows software is disappearing fast, 

 

get off the pot.

[DKT27]

On one side, it's good that crappy AV maker is going to be sold, on the other hand, it's sad it's going to merged, even if on paper, with a comparatively good AV maker, I think.

[pc71520]

Makes me wonder...

 

-Why avast bought an inferior AV vendor?

[AlienForce1]

23 hours ago, pc71520 said:

Makes me wonder...

 

-Why avast bought an inferior AV vendor?

 

It`s not inferior - at least at detection rates , AVG is better - look at latest av-comparatives tests . 

[steven36]

4 hours ago, AlienForce1 said:

 

It`s not inferior - at least at detection rates , AVG is better - look at latest av-comparatives tests . 

When i tested AVG Internet security last  in a VM  when was 2015?  its firewall didn't even kick in tell after you booted up for for so long  so this was a major problem . Back in the early 2000s we called AVG Free another virus got  by. I got infected  from a virus using it before and it let it in and told me it was there but could not remove it . So i reformatted and found a keygen for nortan antivirus witch back then we didn't  have much choices and nortan was not very much better at the time .  Avast i used from like 2011 -2014 and never got infected . since like 2007 ive only used 3 antiviruses on my real machince Kapersky ,Avast and NOD32 and all done good for me. So i put  no vaule in those test  what so ever.  WFC  or Windows 10 Firewall control is  all you need every since Vista Firewall -Windows 10 firewall and work better for me than those that come in suites they were made for Windows XP for when windows didnt have a good built in firewall .

 

KIS has problems too its Firewall has not been very good since v7 but i didn't even use it then I used Kav with look n stop firewall  or another one of my choice . Its only very effictive if you block ips  overall  it dont place nice with rules for trusted programs. I use  to get BSOD off kaspersky even way back then because it didnt place nice with untrusted  programs ether. Only trouble I had with Avast was once beta testing it and it had to many false positives..  so i switch to NOD32  witch has way less false positives.   And now Kaspersky  have a problem about keeping updated for Windows 10 . A lot windows 10 users switch to just using windows defender  if they test preview builds. .

[DKT27]

I heard they were using another AV makers engine from some time now. If anyone can confirm. While Avast may well be aware, I wonder if the deal mentions anything about it.

[AlienForce1]

I didn't said that AVG is a good AV (or Avast) . Almost every infected PC that I see has one of these two installed...

 

[lordi]

wow, nice move avast

[Blackmamba]

In July, we announced our plan to acquire AVG Technologies. Today, I am proud to announce the completion of the acquisition of a majority st
ake in AVG. So we will operate as a single company as of Monday, October 3, 2016. I would like to extend a warm welcome to the AVG team, AVG customers, as well as carrier and channel partners, and I am eager to tell you about our plans for the next few months.