Top Of The Order:
Security? No Security: Over the last couple of years, you could throw a rock in the air and you would likely hit a network security breach. Retailers, financial organizations, movie studios, even the Democratic National Committee have all been victim to various sorts of network hacks.
And that kind of stuff going on had been good for the business of network-security technology companies like Milpitas-based FireEye. I say had been because, well, based on what FireEye said late Thursday, there just haven t been that many big security breach messes to clean up this year.
That was reflected in FireEye s second-quarter results, and its outlook for the rest of the year. FireEye reported a second-quarter loss, excluding one-time items, of 33 cents a share on revenue of $175 million. On the plus side, FireEye lost less than the 39-cents-a-share forecast of Wall Street analysts. But on the negative side, FireEye s sales came in below those analysts estimates of $181.7 million in revenue, and the company didn t even meet its own forecast for sales in a range of $178 million to $185 million.
FireEye said the sales shortfall was due to fewer customers coming to it to solve as many higher-level security breaches as in the past. More of the company s work has come from instances of ransomware attacks on financial institutions, and those problems are quicker and easier to solve.
But, things might be getting even rougher for FireEye.
Fireeye Inc. (FEYE) Stock Price | FindTheCompany
The company also cut its revenue outlook for its entire fiscal year to between $716 million and $728 million from its earlier forecast of $780 million to $810 million. UBS analyst Brent Thill said the results and outlook show that FireEye s business is seeing the impact of lower average deal sizes and overall sales execution challenges only adding to what is shaping up to be a tough transition.
All of that was enough for many investors to hear, as FireEye s shares fell more than 12 percent Friday, to close at $14.73.
And that transition that Thill spoke of? Well, there s going to be fewer FireEye employees around to work through that. The company said it was going to cut between 300 and 400 jobs, or up to almost 12 percent of its 3,400 employees.
Middle Innings:
Leave Those Rings Alone: Let s talk about GIFs for minutes. Whether you say gif or jif or whatever, who doesn t like a good GIF once in a while? Here s one:
Who s got the munchies, now?
Well, you know who doesn t like GIFs? Apparently, the International Olympic Committee.
With the Rio Olympic Games kicking into gear this weekend (and all the attendant Olympic sponsorship deals, as well), the IOC doesn t want anyone besmirching its good name, logos, symbols or anything else under its purview. And it REALLY doesn t want the media covering the Games to make GIFs of anything Olympic related.
You can read the entire policy, but the gist of the GIF part of it is, The use of Olympic Material transformed into graphic animated formats such as animated GIFs (i.e. GIFV), GFY, WebM, or short video formats such as Vines and others, is expressly prohibited.
So much for any dancing Olympic rings coming out of the Rio media pool. What will we do without them?
(Almost) First In, (Maybe) First Out?: There have been a lot of high-level communications officials leaving their companies of late, many of them heading out the front door of Twitter.
And now there s one moving on from Yahoo. Anne Espiritu, Yahoo s senior vice president of global public relations and communications is moving on, ahead of the closing of the company s sale to Verizon Communications. Espiritu was the first person Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer hired away from Google when she (a former fellow Google employee) joined Yahoo in 2012.
Bottom Of The Lineup:
Here s a look at how some leading Silicon Valley stocks did Friday
Movin On Up: Gains came from Silver Spring Networks, Ubiquiti Networks, ShoreTel and IXYS.
In The Red: In addition to FireEye, decliners included Zynga, Aviat Networks, Accuray and Pandora.
The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite Index rose 1 percent to 5,221.
The blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average also rose 1 percent, to close at 18,543.
And the broad-based Standard & Poor s 500 Index rose almost 1 percent to end the day at 2,182.
Quote Of The Day: I m not fully in shape. I need more work but over time I will be fine. — Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who will be going for a third-straight Olympic gold medal in the 100-meter sprint, and other medals, at the Games in Rio
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Photo: An employee looks at the cyber threat monitor at the executive briefing center at FireEye in Milpitas in 2015. FireEye shares fell more than 12 percent Friday after the network security company gave a disappointing quarterly report and said it would cut between 300 and 400 jobs. (Gary Reyes/Bay Area News Group)
The post Biz Break: FireEye slumps amid fewer security deals appeared first on SiliconBeat.
