McAfee, cybersecurity firm founded by John McAfee, Files IPO

McAfee Corp., the storied cybersecurity company founded by John McAfee, has filed for an initial public offering.

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McAfee, cybersecurity firm founded by John McAfee, Files IPO

The company plans to trade on Nasdaq with the ticker MCFE. It’s part of an IPO onslaught this year that has totaled about $95 billion.

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McAfee, San Jose, Calif., in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing didn’t specify the size of its proposed offering.

In the six months through June 27, McAfee posted profit of $31 million, swinging from a loss of $146 million in the year-earlier period. Revenue rose 9% to $1.4 billion from $1.29 billion.

McAfee, whose anti-virus software was a market leader along with Norton in the 1990s and 2000s, sold itself to Intel for $7.7 billion in 2011.

In 2016, Intel sold a 51% stake to the San Francisco private-equity firm TPG for $1.1 billion. In its IPO prospectus, McAfee cites TPG and Chicago PE firm Thoma Bravo as investors.

As for John McAfee, he founded McAfee Associates in 1987 and ran it until 1994, when he left the company.

In 2016 he sought the Libertarian Party nomination for president, losing to former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. He gave it another shot this year, to no avail.

Since leaving McAfee Associates, he has founded a raft of companies, including Tribal Voice, which offers the PowWow chat program; QuorumEx and Future Tense Central.

His interests include smartphone apps, cryptocurrency, yoga, and herbal antibiotics. McAfee has stated several times on Twitter that he has 47 biological children.

In a 2012 article in Mensa Bulletin, McAfee said that having developed the first commercial anti-virus program, he’s “the most popular hacking target.”

He said, “Hackers see hacking me as a badge of honor.”

This article was originally published by TheStreet.