Exclusive – Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro is considering a sale, sources say

By Milana Vinn

(Reuters) – Trend Micro, a Japanese cybersecurity company with a market value of about 950 billion yen ($6.5 billion), is exploring a sale after attracting interest in an acquisition, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The deliberations on the deal come at a time of weakening of the yen in recent weeks and the underperformance of Trend Micro shares compared to Japanese rivals, which has made the company a takeover target.

Trend Micro is working with investment bankers to attract interest from potential buyers, including private equity firms, the sources said, but cautioned that no deal is certain.

The sources requested anonymity because the discussions are confidential. Trend Micro did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Founded in 1988 by technology executives Steve Chang, Jenny Chang and Eva Chen as an antivirus software maker, Trend Micro has expanded its offerings to include cloud computing, network and endpoint security.

Trend Micro shares have lost more than 10 percent of their value since the beginning of the year, lagging the broader Japanese market and many peers as the company struggles to improve its profitability while competing with major U.S. rivals such as Crowdstrike, Microsoft and Palo Alto Networks.

The Tokyo-based company is trying to take market share from Crowdstrike after a global outage last month caused by a Crowdstrike software update crashed over eight million computers and caused havoc in industries from aviation to healthcare.

Earlier on Thursday, Trend Micro reported a 13% increase in second-quarter net sales from the same period last year to 68.6 million yen and an even larger 42% increase in second-quarter operating profit to 12.3 million yen, which the company attributed to an improvement in operating margin to 18%.

The number of deals in the cybersecurity industry has increased as large global corporations spend more on security software. In July, Google parent company Alphabet attempted to close a $23 billion deal to buy cybersecurity startup Wiz, but talks fizzled out.

(Reporting by Milana Vinn in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski)