FireEye Inc, the fast-growing cybersecurity firm headed by former McAfee chief Dave Dewalt, filed on Friday for an initial public offering to raise up to $175 million. FireEye, which sells technology that helps businesses protect themselves against malicious software, said in an IPO filing it more than doubled revenue in the first half of 2013 to $61.6 million, from $29.7 million a year earlier.
It posted a net loss of $67.2 million in the first half, versus $14.3 million in the same period of 2012. FireEye's technology is billed as effective against malware that gets past traditional anti-virus programs sold by companies like Symantec Corp and McAfee. It has raised some $100 million in venture funding from investors including Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Goldman Sachs, Juniper Networks Inc and Silicon Valley Bank.
DeWalt, who resigned as president of McAfee in 2011 after engineering its sale to Intel Corp for $7.7 billion, told Reuters in November he intended to focus on growth over profitability, and hire sales and marketing staff around the globe to drive that expansion. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, J. P Morgan and Barclays will act as lead underwriters, BofA Merrill Lynch and UBS Securities will be bookrunners and Nomura Securities will act as a co-manager.