Mandiant Spins Off as Independent Public Company, FireEye Exits Product Business

FireEye is officially becoming history. As of October 4, the cybersecurity firm has rebranded to Mandiant Inc. and will trade on Nasdaq under ticker MNDT starting October 5.

Here’s what went down: Back in June, FireEye sold off its product division (the FireEye brand, network security, email, and cloud products) to a consortium led by private equity firm Symphony Technology Group for $1.2 billion in cash. The move essentially undoes FireEye’s 2014 acquisition of Mandiant, splitting them back into separate entities.

Why does this matter? Mandiant is where the real growth is. In Q2 2021, their consulting services grew 26% YoY, while overall Mandiant Solutions billings jumped 44%. The company’s been on an acquisition spree too—picked up Respond Software ($186M) in late 2020 to beef up their AI-driven incident response capabilities. They’ve also grown their Mandiant Advantage user base 27% sequentially in Q2.

Now Mandiant can focus purely on incident response and security testing without being tied to legacy product lines. The bet is that independence will let them move faster in a hot market.

Stock watch: Mandiant currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell)—worth keeping an eye on as the standalone story develops.