Looking to take advantage of its high-flying stock price, FireEye (NASDAQ:FEYE), a provider of solutions that help companies block advanced cyber attacks, said late Thursday that it will sell 14 million shares of its common stock at $82.00 per share in a follow-on public offering.
Of the shares being offered, 5,582,215 are being offered by FireEye,which will net the company roughly $460 million,with the remaining shares being sold by existing stockholders. The company said it would not receive any proceeds from the shares sold by existing stockholders.
The underwriters have a 30-day option to purchase up to 2,100,000 additional shares of common stock from FireEye, the company said.
The company originally went public in Sept. 2013 and sold 15,175,000 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $20.00 per share.
The secondary offering comes roughly three months after announcing its $1 billion acquisition of Mandiant. Under the deal, which closed on Dec. 30, FireEye issued 21.5 million shares of stock and paid $106.5 million in cash for Mandiant.
“The stock is up fourfold since its September IPO—which, by the way, raised just $349 million—so it’s no surprise the company and its financial backers are looking to tap investor demand to raise cash,” wrote Matt Jarezmsky in The Wall Street Journal.
“Key to prospective investors in this deal will be whether that performance is already priced into the stock,” Jarezmsky added. “The rally in FireEye’s shares has them trading at an eye-popping 71 times sales, according to FactSet.”
In January, FireEye CFO Michael Sheridan said the acquisition of Mandiant would boost total company revenue for 2014 to $400 to $410 million, compared with the previous expected range of $240 to $250 million. Total billings for 2014 are now expected to be within the range of $540 to $560 million, compared with the previous expected range of $350 to $370 million, the company said.
Shares of FireEye closed at $89.55 on Thursday on the NASDAQ and were trading at $82.40 in pre-market trading at the time of publishing on Friday.
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Managing Editor, SecurityWeek.Previous Columns by Mike Lennon:FireEye Raises $460 Million in Secondary OfferingProofpoint Launches Anti-Malvertising SolutionMicrosoft Shares Untold Story Behind Security Development Lifecycle Target CIO Resigns After Data BreachSmuckers Shutters Online Store After Breach
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