Avast has confirmed the complete purchase of competitor AVG. The deal worth $1.4 billion will see Avast’s customer base increase from 230 million to more than 400 million in total.
Avast says the new combined forces reaches one-third of the world’s PC users outside of China. Both the Avast and AVG brands are likely to continue to operate, depending on relative market strengths.
The takeover was announced first in July 2016, with scale and geographical breadth touted as the driving forces, along with a plan to expand product offerings including in the Internet of Things space.
This might mean jobs would be cut so as to remove duplicate roles, but Avast has not said how many or where they will come at this stage.
Even though AVG is valued at $25 per share, for a total price-tag of $1.3BN, Avast CEO Vince Steckler says there was also around $100M of AVG debt to pay off increasing the total paid to $1.4BN.
The acquisition has been completed within the originally slated timeframe.
According to TechCrunch, Steckler said the two companies had been watching each other for decades, until Avast convinced AVG they were better off as a whole.
“This was, I think, the fourth attempt we have made in the last two or two and a half years to buy AVG,” he said. “We approached them, we got kind of tired of being constantly turned down — so we approached them kind of one last time and told them hey we’ll pay this amount, no higher, no negotiations, tell us yes or no. And they said yes.
“That came together very, very quick — within a matter of days, really.”
Steckler mentions machine learning technology now being used to power many security solutions as a major reason behind this merger, and the increasing need for data.
Source: Techtimes
