How Raytheon Will Unlock The Value Of Its Cybersecurity Business For Shareholders (From Forbes)

Raytheon, one of the nation’s largest defense contractors, has built up an extensive business in cybersecurity by growing its internal cyber skills and making over a dozen carefully chosen acquisitions.  Cyber was a logical adjacency to expand into for a military contractor that needed to understand the field to protect its other products.  Today, its semi-autonomous Forcepoint unit has become the second biggest private cybersecurity firm in the world, and is gradually eclipsing narrow-gauge competitors with enterprise-wide solutions in commercial cyber markets.  What Raytheon Chairman and CEO Thomas A. Kennedy is really angling for, though, is the boost in valuation from investors that comes when a company is well positioned in a market growing at double-digit rates each year.  Kennedy says Raytheon may IPO Forcepoint as a way of getting there, with the parent company maintaining a sizable stake in Forcepoint’s predominantly commercial business while concentrating national-security cyber operations elsewhere in the company.  Whatever path he chooses, Kennedy’s foray into commercial cybersecurity looks assured of surpassing the growth rates in its traditional defense business.  I have written a commentary for Forbes here.