NortonLifeLock Purchases Avira For $360 Million

NortonLifeLock announced today that they have agreed to acquire Avira in an all-cash transaction for approximately $360 million.

Germany-based Avira Operations GmbH has built a large user base of 30 million devices around its freemium model. Under this model, people can install Avira antivirus for free but with less functionality than the premium versions.

The freemium products will attempt to upsell users to the premium version to generate revenue for Avira. The professional versions provide enhanced security features, such as mail filtering, ad blocking, and enhanced malware protection.

By acquiring Avira, NortonLifeLock hopes to expand into the freemium consumer market and strong markets in Europe and other emerging regions.

“I am delighted to welcome Avira to the Norton family,” said Vincent Pilette, CEO, NortonLifeLock. “We strive to bring Cyber Safety to everyone, and acquiring Avira adds a growing business to our portfolio, accelerates our international growth and expands our go-to-market model with a leading freemium solution. Culturally, we are a great match. We share a relentless focus on delivering innovative products to customers and we always think customer-first. We cannot wait to get started with Avira.”

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This acquisition is expected to provide the following economic and financial benefits to NortonLifeLock:

• Advances NortonLifeLock’s aspiration to bring Cyber Safety to everyone.
• Accelerates international growth in Europe and key emerging markets.
• Brings freemium business model and 30M+ active devices to the Norton family.
• Adds approximately 3 points of growth to our revenue with more than 1.5M paying customers
• Financially accretive in the first year, to achieve approximately 50% operating margin post-synergies.

In April 2020, Investcorp Technology Partners purchased Avira for $180 million. With this sale, Avira effectively doubled its value over the last eight months.

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