Barracuda Networks Inc., of Campbell, California, won’t comment on reports first surfacing yesterday that it’s researching a potential sale of the company with bankers at Morgan Stanley, but wants its partners to know that it remains committed to them.
“Our official company policy is to not comment on any rumors or speculation about the business,” Barracuda said in a press statement provided to ChannelPro. “Our channel partners are focused on their business and on serving their customers, and we have an incredibly dedicated channel community. Barracuda always has and will continue to devote resources to our channel to best serve our customers and accelerate growth. Our business grew 14% in revenue for Q3, which is a direct reflection of our partners who are overall seeing their Barracuda business grow as well.”
That last sentence alludes to Barracuda’s earnings report for the third quarter of its fiscal year, issued on January 7th, which in addition to a 14 percent rise in revenue also revealed earnings per share of 7 cents, well below the 9 cents per share Wall Street analysts had been expecting. That triggered a sell-off the next day of Barracuda shares, which have been declining since last summer and remain down 30 percent from their pre-report price in January.
All that financial turmoil hasn’t slowed Barracuda’s product teams any, however. Last week the company released a new Cloud Video Gateway product and announced a partnership with Kroll Ontrack to provide granular recovery for Microsoft SharePoint with Ontrack PowerControls, expanding the SharePoint recovery options available to Barracuda Backup customers.
In September, meanwhile, the company purchased data protection vendor Intronis Inc.
