NortonLifeLock posts double-digit revenue growth in Q2 | ZDNet

Antivirus vendor NortonLifeLock on Thursday published its second quarter financial results, reporting double-digit revenue growth and its eighth consecutive quarter of sequential customer growth.

Additionally, NortonLifeLock shareholders voted on Thursday overwhelmingly to support the company’s proposed merger with Britain’s Avast PLC. 

NortonLifeLock’s non-GAAP diluted EPS was 43 cents on revenue of $695 million, up 11%.

Analysts were expecting earnings of 42 cents per share on revenue of $695.3 million.

The company’s direct customer count in the quarter came to 23.3 million, up 2.6 million. Its customer count has grown every quarter since it was separated from Symantec, the enterprise security business that was purchased by Broadcom in late 2019.

“When we became a standalone company, we said our focus is to make cyber safety available to as many people as possible,” CEO Vincent Pilette said to ZDNet. “There are 5 billion internet users, not all of them consciously protected against cyber criminality… When you sum up people who consciously paid for cyber safety, we have less than 5% penetration. And so it’s a long journey for us, and we’re excited to go and tackle that big problem.”

To grow its customer base, NortonLifeLock six months ago acquired Avira, which offered a freemium model, with the idea to make freemium versions of all of NortonLifeLock’s products available to all Internet users. In August, the company announced its proposed merger with Avast, which would significantly expand NortonLifeLock’s geographic footprint. 

In the meantime, NortonLifeLock reported Q2 bookings of $681 million, up 7%. 

Direct average revenue per user was $8.85, up from $8.80 the prior quarter and down from $9.10 a year prior. 

For the third quarter, the company is expecting revenue in the range of $695 million to $705  million. Non-GAAP EPS is expected to be in the range of 42 cents to 44 cents.