Symantec 2015 Annual Report Download - page 83

The Planned Separation of Information Management from the Security Business
On October 9, 2014, we announced plans to separate our business into two independent publicly-traded
companies: one focused on security and one focused on information management. The transaction is intended to
take the form of a tax-free distribution to Symantec shareholders of all of the capital stock of our information
management business. We expect to complete the legal separation on January 2, 2016, subject to market,
regulatory and certain other conditions. John Gannon has been appointed as General Manager of the information
management business, and Don Rath has been appointed as acting Chief Financial Officer. After the transaction,
Michael Brown and Thomas Seifert will continue to lead Symantec as Chief Executive Officer and Chief
Financial Officer, respectively. For additional separation cost information, see Note 6 of the Notes to
Consolidated Financial Statements included in this annual report.
Business Highlights
During fiscal 2015, we took the following actions in support of our business:
• We announced plans to separate our business into two independent publicly-traded companies: one
focused on security and one focused on information management.
• We released new products and services.
• In Information Management, we launched our NetBackup 5330 appliance, which delivers twice
the performance and capacity of our prior models, making the management of information simpler
and less expensive; and we released Backup Exec 2014, which delivers powerful, flexible, and
easy-to-use backup and recovery to protect a customer’s physical, virtual, or hybrid environment
for a mixture of applications and operating systems.
• In Consumer Security, we simplified our product portfolio by streamlining our core products into
a single Norton Security offering.
• In Enterprise Security, we launched our managed advanced threat protection service, which helps
customers triangulate threat indicators from our endpoint protection and third-party security
products to provide more comprehensive threat detection. We also introduced our managed
incident response service, which provides emergency on-demand service to help customers
recover from a breach. In addition, we introduced our managed adversary and threat intelligence
service, which offers customers a deeper understanding of specific threat actors and attacks.
• We hired five new executives, who bring valuable skills in analytics, backup and recovery software,
sales, security, strategy, and human resources.
• We remained committed to a capital allocation strategy pursuant to which we expect to return over
time approximately 50% of free cash flow to stockholders through a combination of dividends and
share repurchases, while still enabling our company to invest in its future. As part of this program we
paid quarterly cash dividends of $0.15 per share of common stock in fiscal 2015, paying out a total of
$413 million to shareholders.
• Our Board of Directors approved an additional $1.0 billion stock repurchase program in February
2015. This program does not have an expiration date. During fiscal 2015, we repurchased 21 million
shares of our common stock for an aggregate amount of $500 million, and $1.2 billion remains
authorized for future repurchases.
Operating Segments and Products
Our operating segments are significant strategic business units that offer different products and services
distinguished by customer needs. In the second quarter of fiscal 2015, we modified our segment reporting
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