Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion

#31

Post by jonknee » Thu, Aug 19, 2010, 2:08 PM UTC

BrandonM wrote: post #19

jakevoytko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McAfee also has strong UI programming expertise that Intel sorely needed. Intel's IPP and MKL libraries are absolutely great, but VTune looks like it is fresh out of 2002. They get access to several stable revenue streams (like antivirus), and can cherry-pick talent to work on whatever projects they want. There aren't many downsides for Intel.

We're talking about $7.7 billion . I'm not sure it's quite as rosy a picture as you paint. I'm not that familiar with McAfee's annual profits, but even if they make $500 million a year, we can value the talent they cherry-pick at an absurdly high value of $1 billion, and it would still take Intel well over 10 years to recoup the investment, assuming stable revenue streams.

They would be ecstatic with that kind of return. Without growth and still making a hefty return. McAfee has ~$2b in revenue but an operating income of "just" $221m.

Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion

#32

Post by sabat » Thu, Aug 19, 2010, 2:09 PM UTC

The Onion had this strangely prophetic article about 10 years ago:

Just Six Corporations Remain

http://www.theonion.com/articles/just-six-corporations-remai...

Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion

#33

Post by sabat » Thu, Aug 19, 2010, 2:10 PM UTC

mnemonicsloth wrote: post #4

...for a 60% price premium. Right now, large companies have so much cash available to them, on such attractive terms, that acquisitions don't have to be a terribly good fit to be attractive. It's just time to buy.

And it's not like they're motivated to start hiring or anything.

Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion

#34

Post by adamhowell » Thu, Aug 19, 2010, 2:17 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #27

paraschopra wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of stuff eats CPU cycles, Intel surely cannot acquire all of it.

How many other products make everything else on the computer substantially slower?

Windows?

Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion

#35

Post by loewenskind » Thu, Aug 19, 2010, 2:24 PM UTC

clofresh wrote: post #25

Maybe we can get hardware-level virus checking instructions so that scans don't take so freakin' long.

Good lord, please no! We need to make viruses so slow and painful that every OS designer must make their OS resilient to them. This is a stupid problem to have at all, the last thing we want is to bake in into the bloody hardware!

Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion

#36

Post by Groxx » Thu, Aug 19, 2010, 2:27 PM UTC

Heard via NPR this morning: Intel stocks are down a few %, while McAfee is up over 50%.

Seems investors think this is better for McAfee than Intel, too.

Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion

#37

Post by mcknz » Thu, Aug 19, 2010, 2:28 PM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #2

Why would they do this? It seemed obvious to me than in 5-10 years Antivirus software would be obsolete and unnecessary. I hear people every day recommending Windows 7 users get Microsoft Security Essentials and nothing else. And personally I run Ubuntu, so I haven't thought about antivirus software in years... This seems like a very odd decision to me. Intel, a world leader in processor design, does not need to get…

Intel decided to do a public good, and plans to remove all McAfee antivirus software from the planet.

Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion

#38

Post by jakarta » Thu, Aug 19, 2010, 2:31 PM UTC

I think this is indicative of a real risk we will see with large corporations right now. Many of these large cap companies have huge cash hordes and are being pressured to do something with it. The risk is that the cash will be used stupidly to do poor deals and I think the market is indicating that this McAfee deal is a bad one.

Their shareholders would have probably been better suited with a special $7B dividend instead.

Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion

#39

Post by mcknz » Thu, Aug 19, 2010, 2:31 PM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #36

Heard via NPR this morning: Intel stocks are down a few %, while McAfee is up over 50% . Seems investors think this is better for McAfee than Intel, too.

Pretty typical for an acquisition -- the stock price of the company to be acquired will rise quickly to the price per share the buyer offers.

Re: Intel to buy McAfee for $7.7 Billion

#40

Post by shadowfox » Thu, Aug 19, 2010, 2:31 PM UTC

mcknz wrote: post #37

cryptoz wrote: post #2

Why would they do this? It seemed obvious to me than in 5-10 years Antivirus software would be obsolete and unnecessary. I hear people every day recommending Windows 7 users get Microsoft Security Essentials and nothing else. And personally I run Ubuntu, so I haven't thought about antivirus software in years... This seems like a very odd decision to me. Intel, a world leader in processor design, does not need to get…

Intel decided to do a public good, and plans to remove all McAfee antivirus software from the planet.

Is McAfee really that bad?