FireEye stocks crashed down as an agreement to suppress cyber spying was inked by the United States and China.
FireEye, which provides cloud-based technology for its clients to fight viruses that attempt to breach earlier antivirus software, has revealed that its stocks plunged, resulting to the company's shares reaching an all-time low. It even missed a viable measurement for future growth — a third quarter billing that did not hit the mark. In effect, FireEye's full-year guidance was pulled down.
FireEye was among the most outstanding cyber security firms to join the public markets in the midst of a series of high-profile attacks to which investors showed a lot of interest for its services. Most of its customers are enterprises and government departments. However, the company has said recently that it saw a decline in attacks and projected a limited growth for that reason.
MarketWatch reported Chief Executive Dave DeWalt said that the slump in stocks was mainly because of a drop-off in large scale cyber attacks which partially originated from China's agreement with the U.S. and other nations to curtail cyber spying between them.
On Wednesday, the former McAfee CEO said at FireEye's headquarters in Silicon Valley that as a result of the accession between the said nations, the company received smaller deals and shorter contracts which may probably shake up its sales.
DeWalt said, “The frontal assault the Chinese military had on commercial operations in America was in pretty high gear for a few years here … but the pivot of China policy is causing some differences.”
Business Insider reported the figures of FireEye's third quarter revenue results do not look good. The security company lost less money than projected and to some degree ahead on profit estimates. Nevertheless, shares were down around 15 percent hours after it failed on billings and descended forecasts for next year.
The numbers were as follows:
Revenue: $167.1 million estimated vs. $165.6 million.
Billings: $225 million to $230 million guidance vs. $210.6 million.
EPS: $0.45 loss per share estimated vs. $0.37 loss per share.
For the coming year, FireEye has lessened its revenue projections from $630 million to $645 million down to $620 million to $628 million.
Meanwhile, analysts have stated that despite an increase in demand for protection against advanced threat, FireEye has been greatly affected by intense competition from rivals Imperva Inc., Palo Alto Networks Inc. and Proofpoint Inc. who have posted big results.
The departure of Michael Sheridan and Dave Merkel this year, FireEye's chief financial officer and chief technology officer respectively, could also do damage to FireEye's sales growth and product development, as per Reuters.
