Symantec reported declining profits, but improved revenue for its 2011 fourth fiscal quarter ended April 1, attributed to strong sales in backup, software-as-a-service and data loss prevention products.
The security vendor posted fourth quarter net income at $168 million, down from $184 million from the year-ago period. For its fiscal year, Symantec profit totaled $597 million, down from $714 million from the year before.
Symantec's fourth quarter revenue totaled $1.67 billion, rising nine percent from $1.53 billion in the year-ago quarter. For the year, revenue rose 3 percent to $6.19 billion.
Symantec executives attributed revenue increases to significant growth in backup, SaaS and data loss prevention technologies. "We closed our fiscal year surpassing expectations across each of our key financial metrics, driven by market share gains and growth in backup, software-as-a-service, data loss prevention and consumer. In addition, our recent acquisitions performed above expectations for their consecutive quarter," Symantec CEO Enrique Salem said in a statement.
As in previous quarters, backup and storage and server management comprised the lions' share of Symantec's revenues, occupying around 37 percent of the company's overall revenues, but experiencing only modest gains of about eight percent year-over-year.
During a conference call Wednesday, Salem highlighted gains in the backup arena, saying the company's flagship storage Net Backup product experienced double digit growth, "and we are gaining share," he added.
Additionally, executives said that the rapid adoption of deduplication technologies also drove storage sales during the fourth quarter. Salem said he anticipated that accelerated growth to continue following the company's recent introduction of its V-Ray technology, which provides increased visibility into both physical and virtual machines.
"We are confident it will further differentiate our backup products from the competition," Salem said. "Customers clearly see the benefit of one integrated solution in one device. I expect that to continue, and I think we'll see a positive boost to our backup and deduplication devices."
Executives also highlighted growth in the security and compliance business, which comprised 27 percent of the company's total revenue, achieved 24 percent year-over-year growth, boosted in part by strong sales resulting from the VeriSign and PGP acquisitions. Altogether, revenues from VeriSign totaled $61 million, while revenue from PGP generated $20 million, out of the total $186 million reached in acquisition revenue.
Salem also pointed to rising sales of DLP behind much of the company's security growth, which he said nearly doubled during the fourth quarter, attributed to larger deals and overall adoption, as well as expansion into broader market segments.
"We're making the relationship with the CISO's more visible and prominent, which had an impact on the overall performance of security. With the number of high profile (security) events, customers are absolutely looking at what they need to do to protect their confidential data," he added.
Symantec executives said that the company had to overcome challenges with sales of endpoint security in the SMB markets, but attempts were underway to create more opportunities there with the impending release of Symantec Endpoint Protection, Small Business Edition.
Looking ahead, executives projected that revenues for its first fiscal quarter of 2012 would rise between $1.57 and $1.59 billion, increasing somewhere between 10 and 11 percent year-over-year.
