MessageLabs Rings the Bell

Do you remember back in early October? (Just last month -- when your 401K actually had money in it!) In an announcement that occurred just as the bottom fell out of the stock market, Symantec announced its intentions to acquire MessageLabs, provider of online messaging and Web security services, for $695M in cash (of which £310 million in Pounds Sterling which turns out to be a pretty good financial move by Symantec as the Dollar gained significantly over the Pound in the past month). We've followed the anti-spam market for years and what never ceases to amaze us is how much startup valuation has occurred in this market segment over the years. We always like to remind people that there are just a few hundred high volume spammers out there who have created over $3B in liquidity events in the past five years. MessageLabs' stats were pretty impressive: Sales of $145M, 19,000 customers (8 million users) in 86 countries (63% of its business from EMA). This is Symantec's third acquisition in this segment (Brightmail and TurnTide were added in four years ago).