Big changes may be ahead for Reston cybersecurity company Mandiant Inc. (NASDAQ: MNDT), which is reportedly the subject of acquisition talks on the heels of an already transformative end of 2021.
The company, which was purchased by fellow cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. in 2013, turned around and sold off FireEye’s products business during the fourth quarter of last year. Then, Bloomberg reported Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has expressed interest in buying Mandiant, which has a market capitalization of over $4 billion.
Unsurprisingly, Mandiant’s stock price shot up by more than 15% when those talks with Microsoft first surfaced in reports earlier this month. It is currently trading around $18.50 a share.
“We don’t comment on rumors as a matter of policy,” John Watters, Mandiant's president and chief operating officer, told the Washington Business Journal. More generally, he added, “we partner with everybody, including Microsoft. They’re a good strategic partner of ours.”
Spinning off the FireEye business has helped streamline Mandiant’s remaining subscription-as-a-service business model. Before, “oftentimes the customer felt they were doing business with four different companies,” Watters said. Now, it is focused on streamlining the customer experience.
Mandiant sold the FireEye products business to McAfee Enterprise, which is backed by private equity firm Symphony Technology Group, for $1.2 billion in cash. Now that the company is independent of the once-Milpitas, California-based FireEye, CEO Kevin Mandia has moved the company’s headquarters back to Reston. When FireEye acquired Mandiant in 2013, it retained the company’s Alexandria location and federal operations in Reston.
The company occupies two floors of a Freedom Drive office building in Reston Town Center, and with many employees not coming into the office every day, Watters said staff at the smaller office in Alexandria will transfer to Reston by the end of this year.
“If you’ve got desks for 200 people, you might be able to serve, 400, 500 people in the area if they just come in occasionally – one, two days a week,” Watters said.
Nearly half of the firm’s 2,200 employees are based in Greater Washington. During 2021, it hired over 90 engineers and that’s still the area in which it’s doing it’s “most aggressive hiring,” Watters said. While the company declined to disclose a headcount target, Mandiant is currently hiring employees based anywhere.
“We have the same challenges that every other company in the world does right now, particularly tech companies and security tech companies, trying to find great talent to join us," Watters said.
Mandiant's revenue for all of 2021 was $483 million, up 21% year-over-year. While its losses from continuing operations last year totaled $409 million, it logged a total $918.57 million in profits for the year. The company’s annualized recurring revenue was $279 million at the end of 2021, 23% higher than at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. Watters said the company is further positioned for profitability for 2023.
