Symantec investors are braced for another poor financial performance for the three months ending in June, when the security giant announces its fiscal first quarter 2016 earnings on Tuesday.
The market leader has seen revenue and profits slump in recent months while rising stars like FireEye continue to grow.
Market watcher Technology Business Research (TBR) is expecting Symantec’s year-on-year revenue to decline by around 12%, following on from a 6.6% year-on-year drop the previous quarter.
Its enterprise security business unit is slated to slump by around 6% while the consumer security side of the business will fare even worse, posting something in the region of an 18% drop.
The security giant has been trying to adapt of late to changing customer requirements – with the heightened threat of targeted attacks forcing many CISOs to look at advanced threat detection and response and forensics tools.
It announced a new investment fund for M&A forays into the start-up space and integration with cloud storage vendor Box to help strengthen its competitive position against rivals, according to TBR security lead, Jane Wright.
“However, TBR believes Symantec’s pointed actions will lead to only a niche set of new revenue opportunities, rather than driving the comprehensive security revenue growth that Symantec needs to begin to reverse its revenue decline in the coming year,” she cautioned in a commentary on the firm.
Symantec will likely strengthen its commitment to the data loss prevention (DLP) space – which has been a strong area for the firm for some time.
“TBR believes demand for DLP will waver in the coming year as some customers believe ‘data will leak anyway’ and seek out alternative data protection solutions,” she added.
“But there will continue to be security challenges that are best addressed by DLP technologies, such as blocking insider attacks. By holding firm to its DLP strategy, Symantec will maintain its market share position in a shrinking but less-crowded security segment.”
Information management unit Veritas will grow a predicted 3% during the period, although Symantec last year announced it will be splitting off this part of the business.