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McAfee files for 57.5 Million IPO
LordOmar writes "According to this CNET article McAfee has filed for a 57.5 Million Dollar IPO. Don't even get me started on Weather Futures. " *sigh* And I can remember when they were just a shareware anti-virus coming. How times have changed (cue weepy music).
It's seems like IPOs are being announced right and left... please, I need to be enlightened, along with the rest of the slashdot crowd, about IPOs and stock. I haven't been around long.... have high tech companies been releasing IPOs like crazy only recently, or is this a pretty non-fantastic phenomenon... and if it is only a recent thing, what did we do before IPOs? This whole thing is beginning to frighten me.
You'll eat it and you'll like it.
IPOs happen. You aren't communist, are you? :D
-bugg
it seems silly to complain about all these IPO's sprouting up left and right (With even Andover going for IPO!), I know if I were them I'd try to cash in on this IPO-mania for all it's worth. It may seem to us to be a whole lot of jumping on the bandwagon, but it's just business.
What would happen if other operating systems other than those sold by Microsoft becomes popular and allows consumers to have security and privacy? Will the market for virus software and services decline? This is going to be a real interesting stock to watch if the actually do it.
Oh, McAffee,
you really make me laughee,
your software is so daffy,
makes my system run like taffy,
Oh McAffee,
for support you charge a high fee,
my disk drive you atrophe,
make me write songs just like Raffi,
(sorry, must have been the Wierd Al concert I went to last night)
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I've always been rather skeptical about markets, inventing, economy, etc.. However, when I see things like the weather trading, and nonexistent companies like linuxone.com, I have to ask myself just WTF is going on here? How can anyone take this seriously?
That said, I know for a fact aht I don't understand even very legitimate trading. Is there some site out there that explains the basics of all this? I don't see any difference between investing in the weather, and sitting in front of a slot machine! (except for the pretty lights...)
Wait a second, here. You can't just slip something like that in and expect to get away with it. :-)
Can anyone explain this weather futures thing to me? Is it any more respectable, for example, than horseracing?
How would one trade in the weather?
This is one of those things that make me begin to think I'm losing my grip on reality. Is this as bizarre to anyone else as it is to me?
The weird thing about this IPO is that the company is ALREADY public. MacAfee was acquired by the entity now know as Network Associates some time ago (this same entity also acquired PGP and a buttload of other companies private and public).
Before the 90s, IPOs weren't such the industry they have become nowadays. My personal awareness of IPOs really began with Netscape going public. But, it does seem to have gotten a bit out of hand nowadays when companies like MacAfee are jumping on the bandwagon of IPO hype to get themselves what is effectively some free cash.
I do like Andover's IPO, the Dutch Auction method insures that there will be little to no "pop" on the opening day, thus ultimately reducing the hype surrounding the event and in turn getting the company the most money that it can (instead of giving all of it to the lucky few who get IPO shares and flip them when the share start trading freely).
People forget that one of the original purpose of companies was to raise money to fund risky ventures to plunder ... errr .... trade with the New World. Given the state of navigation technology at the time, nobody in their right minds ventured everything on a single bet. Hence the development of syndicates, then Loyds to insure against loss, and stock exchanges to allow people to enter/exit various syndicates. Over time, the stock exchanges have evolved to the best gambling joint on earth (and of course you know that the only people that are guarenteed to make money is the house). As the old wag goes, "I invest, you speculate, he gambles". The essential role of modern stock exchanges is to shift risk onto people who are willing (and bright/dumb depending on viewpoint) to bear it with the mantra that returns match risk. Thus as a youngster with no life, you can afford to bet everything on obscure startups whereas retirees prefer steady income streams from things like utilities and blue chips.
If you think about human activities, a major determinant is the climate and weather. Sales of ice-cream soar on sunny days. Harsh winters push up demand of heating fuel. Derivatives are a mechanism for rapidly signalling events and allowing people to hedge and avoid being caught out by unexpected circumstances. Energy markets are going to be a key beneficiary as well as agriculture, tourism and discretionary events (if it gets rained out then you don't lose everything). Betting on the weather hedge funds that are likely to appear sooner is probably a surer thing that IMHO some of the current IPOs which seem to be scraping the barrel of good ideas.
Oh well, no laws against stupidity.
LL
Um... i remember way back when, there was an ftp that mcafee had that had all the licensed products just there to download. Amazingly, its still there. I know it may be just for registered users, but i find it amazing that after so long and after so many warez sites have this ftp, user, and pass, that it is still there, with the same user and pass.
But if its still there, how do they make the money? Did everyone just forget about it or something?
A new virus is propagating across the internet, it was announced today. Once the IPO virus, as it has been called, has infected a company, all communication from the infected area ceases imediately. The payload for this virus has not been fully classified yet, but has been termed the "buy! buy!" strain. However, a opposite strain, called "it's free - why buy it?" seems to counteract it, and regardless, after 90 days, the company seems to recover, and can communicate freely again
This virus is very common about companys closely related with the Linux product, and seems to be highly contagious, each company getting more infected that the former one. Thankfully, companys only seem to get infected once, and no reinfections are reported as of this date. There are rumors of a strain called an SPO, as yet unconfirmed...
An update to disable for this virus, called the MS Buyout, will be released shortly.
--
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
Comment removed based on user account deletion
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Usually they tell us alot of stuff which we aren't allowed to disclose to the public, etc, release dates, known issues, etc, etc, etc, but since that is related to the product, and this is related to the business, does that mean they can't tell us? Most of my direct associates here have stock in Network Associates. How will this affect them? Mcafee IS Network Associates. Network Associates is not just Mcafee, but Network General as well. Its not two big companys in a co-op, its an actual corporation, a physical entity. How in the world does this work? I am at a loss and my boss has not heard of this either.
I just thought of something, these guys have been around for a LONG time, since the early Cretaceous, in computer-industry terms. These guys must all be totally vested in their stock options by now.
Congrats guys, you've waited longer than any other company I know for "the big payoff". Now go buy yourself a new computer.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
ok, that's it.. the line between gambling and investment has now completely disappeared. please explain to me how that buying weather futures are legal in states with no anti-gambling laws. Or does it fall under the category of "internet gambling" and thus wind up outide the jurisdiction of the states?
It took me until about halfway through this article to convince myself that "oregon live" wasn't just some kind of attempt to cash in on the success of The Onion.
-mcc-baka
who misses disinfectant, and wishes the guy who made it had just GPLed what code he had when he retired.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Btw, this company is extremely NT oriented and it drives me batty, I think I'm the only one here who knows anything about linux. We do have a virusscanner out there for linux, but, there are no DAT's for it which contain Linux viri (wonder why, none exist. HA!) Anyway, it scans for Win32, WinNT binary viruses and macro viruses, same as the DOS and Win32 scanners do.
What companies profit from virii? What companies hire programmers to learn how to program them and recognize them? What companies would have the most to lose if the public was not afraid of virii? What companies have the most to gain if new virii are publicized? I am making no accusations, but I am very curious. We all know that companies are completely ethical in their business dealings. Don't we?
Linux is legally free, but Red Hat still makes money (well, not yet, but hopefully soon). Individual users don't really matter to McAfee (until a fairly recent version, they did nothing to enforce the evaluation time limit). They get their money from corporations like the one I worked at last summer. They licensed two copies of McAfee for every employee (the second copy is so people don't bring viruses from home). In retrospect, McAfee was a stupid decision, since it did not get along well at all with Novell networks. Still, I'm surprised that they haven't changed the password on their site after all these years (I won't give it to you, so don't ask).
If you simply can't resist every IPO to come down the pike...
Have we got a deal for you! I bet you just can't live without a Stock Trading Yucca Plant! Yes, call us today to order your very own!
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
apparently someone beat me to the yucca plant bit. :-) anyway. i'm reading Snow Crash right now. i think it gives this stuff a lot of perspective. language is a virus. 'anti-virus' software is a virus. the market is a virus. these virii are very carefully controlled by the people who understand them. like snow crash the drug, this stuff is attacking more than one level. mcaffee et al spread both the social 'fear of computer virii' meme, and the technological part -- actual destructive programs -- to feed them off eachother. likewise with the whole IPO thing, your _en_ spreading 'market analysis', day traders, everything... the whole thing is a collective fiction, worthless pieces of paper.
1) You don't "reverse engineer" something that has documented source code made widely available.
2) You can't provide the "only" utility to disinfect if the "virus" itself has an option to perform disinfection.
After the starved for attention McAfee and their spin doctors got done with their press release of lies, Axel Boldt was nice enough to put together a web page that spell out the actual facts about the Bliss "virus." The web page has disappeared but the impact of McAfee's press release still remains on the web. One of the better pages still around is Stuart Luppescu's responce which is worth reading.
I don't see how such an unprofessional company can be worth a 57.5 Million IPO. Even if someone I trust came back from the future a told me that I could make millions by investing in McAfee now, I wouldn't based on princiable (just as I wouldn't invest in MicroSoft if I could go back in time).
"And I can remember when they were just a shareware anti-virus coming. How times have changed (cue weepy music). "
And I can remember when they were just a geek-news site with comments ability. How times have changed....
No offense intended, por supuesto!
-matt
---
Wha? TV & Movie Theme Songs? Oh yeah....
Don't worry, i already have the password... hehe, it was stashed somewhere on my computer for at least one year or two years, and guess what? When i was cleaning it out to move files to my new computer, i found it, tried it, and it worked! The oddest thing... and to think, normal warez ftps are gone in a matter of days or weeks...
I had gotten McAfee Office for $55+tax a month or two ago. There was also a $50 rebate which I sent in. Unfortunately this bloated office suite is making my computer unstable and slow as heck. Can you imagine Windows crashing more than it normally does?! So I try to sell this thing back on a online auction. Yet no one will bid on the $5 starting bid. I might as well toss it in the garbage bin if I have to sell for anything lower.
are you people dumb? Don't you realize that putting all the products on a easily accessible private FTP share only increases your market share? Maybee Joe Company uses Gauntlet illegally for free cause they snaked it from the FTP site.. WHO CARES? NAI wants the BIG tickets, not the piddly customers. There little profit in the retail market, as there's little profit in the UNDER 1k market as well. Why focus your manpower on 100 1k deals when you can focus on 1 100k deal, and save the resources?
The FTP site is open BY DESIGN. NAI knows this. It's not a mistake. The word DUH comes to mind.
-EX NAI Employee
Try this press release on for size.
As for you not knowing much, well, Po Bronson points out that there are clear lines between who gets to know stuff about IPOs; of course, it has to do with securities laws in the end, but the practical effect is to make certain things very secret, even from the people whose lives are materially affected by the outcome.
As to how it works, "Mcafee.com" can easily be a stock-issuing subsidiary to another corporation. It happens in the other direction all the time: one corporation investing in another by buying, say, 10% of its stock. In this case, the subsidiary is in a substantially-enough different business from the main corporation that they want to give investors the ability to "track" its success separately. This can be done by a special class of stock, or as a semi-public subsidiary.
Since the prospectus isn't available yet (that I can find), it's hard to tell how much stock is being made public and how much NAI is still going to own.
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Seriously, investing in the stock market is not that hard, and is an excellent long-term risk ... emphasis on long-term.
... and how you can actually earn money in the market. Best of all, it's free! No, really!
People going for short-term profits, like the infamous day-traders, or who obtusely put all their life savings into penny stocks or something else inadviseable, are the people really taking risks. But as for the average person, it's really pretty easy to earn money in stocks.
The key is being willing to wait 20 or 30 years for your money to appreciate. Historically, stocks give an excellent rate of return -- upwards of 12 to 15%. (Try getting THAT from your bank.) The problem is that not every single stock appreciates like that, and frequently stocks do decline in price for a period of time.
For my money, and I mean that literally, the best place to learn is the Motley Fool. Start by browsing the Fool's School, and you'll hopefully have a better appreciation of how it all works
As for investing in risky things like the high-tech market, well, first of all: invest only in companies that you understand. And even then, invest only money that you can lose -- because you just might. And meanwhile, invest money you CAN'T lose (like your retirement fund) in tax shelters like 401(k) plans, IRAs, and so on -- and with proven techniques, mostly involving buying stocks and holding onto them for a Very Long Time, as opposed to trying to outguess the highs and lows of the market.
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
but relevant in the wonderful world of
<RoLlEr_CoAsTeR>
What does:
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes ; Ceterum censeo, delenda est Microsoft
mean? (something to do with M$, obviously, but that's all I can discern)
Insert mind here.
Not that I'm anything but happy. See that drop at the begining of Q2? That happened right after they had made me a job offer, and I had given notice at my old job. When that happened, they withdrew my offer. Luckily, my current boss called me about an hour later and said that he had my resume and was interested in me. Their offer letter said to keep it confidential, but screw them. One year out of college, plenty of good skills, they offered me $50k/yr + 1600 stock options, for a job with MacAfee.com in Tigard, Oregon.
Were'nt they on the the stock exchange before being bought out by NAI?
A lotsa peeps workin dere got BEANS BABY!
BTW, your options were really shitty, be glad you stayed the hell away.
And by the way, all you NAI employees and contractors posting to slashdot?
YOU'RE FIRED!!! YOU'RE ALL FUCKIN' FIRED!!!
Let's not make that crazy Russian bastard any wealthier.
There's all these FUCKING MORONS who write viruses for FREE!!!! Why would we shoot ourselves in the head sponsoring that activity when individuals that are totally unaffiliated with us step up to provide our bread and butter?
We don't say it publicly, but we really owe a beer to those bastards. Except that motherfucker who wrote Melissa. Blew away my goddam weekend.
So how long before theres the Software 100 Listing of Stocks? One question is why didnt this happen sooner since all of McAfees parent companys holdings have gone public, why did Network Assoc. wait for McAfee? Probably just say Andover.net and had to do it.
Price of one holding? ~.01$ because thats about what the intelectual property of any product they have ever put out combined adds up to. If i can remeber corectly McAfee basicly ejaculated Anti-Virus software onto O/S's that don't really need it. (Flamebait commenting posted Via AuctionXpress, the fastest way to get bids^H^H^H^H replys on Ebay^H^H^H^H Slashdot!)
Still, for Win 9X anti virii I rely on Norton products although they make CPU's scream bloody murder.
Do you really think MS or NAI cares about the people that pirate small amounts of their software?
Every MS piracy case I have seen involved large amounts of their CD's and certificates. I can go on the web and download a large amount of their stuff. I can go to a computer show and pick up Site Server 3.0 for $60, Office 2000 for $40, and Windows NT for $25. Heck, I can even go to EBay and get the same products. And I will be able to for a long time coming. That is, IF I actually used their products at home besides Windows 98. I find their stuff to be too bloated to use.
However, MS knows this too. It's MARKET SHARE. Every person that buys site server for $60, or Windows NT for $25 means one less person that bought a competing product. MS does this to hurt their competition. I also have noticed how NT at the shows is priced MUCH less than Red Hat Linux selling there.
However, tying this back in, NAI has to know this. Every user that downloads from that site doesn't use Norton or the competition. NAI does the same thing. It's business. Their big accounts drop tons of money for their antivirus and that's 90% of the sales anyway. McAfee Antivirus is not their big product. NetShield NT is. Even though it can be downloaded, every PHB will spend the exorbitant cash to slow their servers down and buy it.
And by the way, I've used it with Novell also. The only good way to use it (and I say this with much reserve) is to mount the server volumes and scan using their Windows products on a client machine.
>a shareware anti-virus company. How times have
>changed (cue weepy music)
I wonder where these sentiments were when you heard about the Andover IPO...
"I'm about to become a multi-millionaire, but (sigh) I can remember when the site was just a side project run out of the dorms (cue weepy music)"
IPO's can be used by *people with a surplus of stored value (ca$h or credit) to multiply said surplus as much and as fast as possible and preferably with the least possible effort. If successful, such users earn themselves even more "freedom". (from what: fear? envy? lack of sex appeal? who knows?;) anyways..
Companies which conduct these IPO's exploit such human virtues to raise money (needed to finance international legal and customer aquisition costs.. (remember, you are now an Internet company dotcom(tm), or you are roadkill, and this web grows global fast)). Founders and early investors of Internet companies can also use these IPO's to amass fabulous fortunes for themselves to diversify and secure by investing in new IPO's, politicians , etc.
Now, partially owned by the "public" (see above*), stock prices reflect "our" confidence in the company's potential to profit. Company managers, typically holding stakes of their own, spur the company to attract the highest possible share price. Bottom line. Period.
Whether our grandchildren or theirs will regard this behavior as blatently criminal is another question.
Whether there are alternatives to inequity exacerbating IPO and "street" methods of idea "ownership" is a question I hope /. will address and soon. After all, the MAN(tm), his law(tm) and by-laws(IPO Corp.) are forms of "code", right? (They instruct energetic systems to behave predictably. Or try to.)
So how do IPO's and like ownership models perpetuate "code"? Openly? How does it affect our capacity to trade our learning and creativity? Are there alternatives? Here may be a interesting one:
"Chaord" or "chaordic". [haHA! 2nd post:] It's shocking that Dotters of Slash completely ignore an archetypical business structure that seems to effectively trade creativity and borderlessly: Visa International. Growth? 20% annually, since way before any long boom, past $ 1.2trillion in '98 sales, no end in sight. Method? Better attract human ingenuity, (the most valuable AND abundant resource on the planet.) Blend competition with cooperation, seamlessly. Failure? Dee Hock, who founded Visa, says it could have been four times more powerful if ownership had been extended to merchants and cardholders.. Customers owning the business? COOL! bu..WTF!? How to hack that???
IPO? Stock? Forget it. Visa can't bought, sold, traded or raided. Ownership is shared in non-transferable rights of participation.
It's a very unusual "learning organization": commanders don't control it from the center. Instead, chaos organizes itself at the edges, adapting locally, learning and evolving. Advantages arise out of individual initiative. Ideally, "chaorganizations" are "equitable owned by all participants." Sound like a more "open source" code for biz? IMHO, /. and RHAT and MP3c may have kinda choked if they didn't consider more "open" ownership models, proven successful by Visa..
Anyway, a more positive way to look at IPO's and Public Companies is as forms of "currency". If you have some to spare, you could buy gold, but you have to pay someone to guard it, and gold's value is dropping. You could guard U.S.Gov't(tm) printed dead prezidents, but why do it when your banker will pay you interest to borrow them? Still, who wants a measly 6% when brand-name "currency" like yahoo! or rhat or idealab! may earn me 600%? In this light, it's more rewarding to invest in people and ideas rather than self-obsoleting systems or hoarding stores of value. Currency users now have more options, can better "vote with their pocketbook", perpetuate what they value, and maybe earn themselves some more "freedom". More options, more freedom? Who knows?
links, again, on dee hock, visa, and chaords: /chaos_is_good.htm /05/deehock.html
http://www.chaordic.org/chaordic
http://www.cascadepolicy.org/dee_hock.htm ">
http://www.fastcompany.com/online
I know a guy who used to be an executive at McAfee. Let's put it this way... the relationship between virus writers and McAfee is very cozy, very cozy indeed. They are in indirect contact with each other, constantly.
What's interesting is that MCAF was generally a well-regarded company (they're a case study of a good investment in the Motley Fool's Investment Guide). NETA, on the other hand, is currently a poorly regarded company, due to major financial screwups and merger indigestion.
I wonder why they're being allowed to re-use the old MCAF ticker symbol. My guess is that it will basically fool people who hadn't paid attention over the past 2 years into believing that NETA's MCAF is the original MCAF.
Don't forget that the current MCAF (the IPO venture) is nothing but a web site that sells Network Associates consumer products. Nice trick, that --- "spinning off" your own marketing division into a seperate venture.
Does everyone like this program or what? I think Norton's AntiVirus is better. Of the 3 virii I've had on my computer... only norton has been able to fix them..
A day or 2 later, and NO COMMENTS on this story! I don't think it's sad (McAfee filing for an IPO, that is), in fact I think it's good that a small shareware company has grown into a huge success -- it means that business models that look risky (or looked risky before McAfee's success) can pay off bigtime.
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861