Symantec 2015 Annual Report Download - page 4

resources. We generated $1.31 billion in cash from operations, an increase of 2% year-over-year, and
returned $913 million of cash to shareholders. Actions by our Board of Directors to authorize an
additional $1.0 billion stock repurchase program in February 2015, to increase this program by a further
$1.5 billion in August 2015, and to maintain our $0.15 quarterly dividend, greatly increasing our dividend
payout ratio post separation, underscore our continued commitment to returning cash to shareholders.
SEPARATING OUR INFORMATION MANAGEMENT BUSINESS
One of the most important decisions we made in fiscal 2015 was separating Symantec into two
independent, industry-leading companies to increase focus, reduce complexity, and enhance our strategic
flexibility. The pace of innovation in both the security and information management markets has
dramatically accelerated. We believe two standalone companies will better address the rapidly growing
innovation opportunities in their dynamic markets. In cybersecurity, the frequency, complexity, and
impact of threats have markedly increased. Customers require real-time intelligence at a global scale,
instantly translated into proactive protection for each organization and user. In information management,
data continues to grow at an exponential rate, and managing it is becoming more complex. Customers
require cost-effective, resilient and reliable management of their information. We are confident that by
separating from our information management business, our security business will have the right focus to
grow and deliver shareholder value.
ACCELERATING INNOVATION IN OUR SECURITY BUSINESS
Our security strategy consists of the following: 1-deliver a unified security analytics platform that
provides big data analytics, utilizes our vast telemetry, provides visibility into real-time global threats, and
powers Symantec and third-party security applications; 2-leverage this analytics platform to provide best-
in-class consumer and enterprise security software; and 3-offer cybersecurity services that provide a full-
suite of services from monitoring to incident response to threat intelligence supported by over 500
cybersecurity experts and nine security response centers.
Consumer Security: In fiscal 2015, we expanded our Norton operating margin by streamlining our
operations through business simplification and cost reduction. Going forward, the Norton organization is
focused on initiatives to mitigate revenue declines while maintaining our current profitability. These
initiatives include: 1-increasing customer acquisition by refining our marketing messaging and optimizing
our pricing for our premium service offering; 2-migrating existing consumers from an annual renewal to
our cloud-based subscription offering; 3-boosting customer retention rates by improving the user
experience throughout the customer lifecycle; and 4-expanding distribution channels through telcos and
other service providers.
Enterprise Security: During fiscal 2015, we returned endpoint protection to market growth on a constant
currency basis, continued to take share in data loss prevention, established a strong presence in incident
response services, and reallocated investments to growth areas such as threat protection, information
protection and cybersecurity services.
• In threat protection, we shipped the first two of our Advanced Threat Protection solutions in May
2015: the ATP: Network appliance and ATP: Email. By early fall, we expect to deliver our ATP:
Endpoint offering. These solutions provide integration of the endpoint, email and network control
points and leverage the combined intelligence of our unified security analytics platform to provide
one of the industry’s first automated solutions to prioritize incidents.
• In information protection, our flagship data loss prevention (DLP) offering is the industry leader with
nearly twice the market share of our closest competitor. In the December 2014 quarter, we launched
two new DLP cloud solutions: DLP for Cloud Email to work with Microsoft Office 365 Exchange and
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