LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal's retail-focused conglomerate Sonae plans to buy more cybersecurity firms as it builds a portfolio in Portugal, Spain, the United States and Germany, a company official said.
Carlos Silva, executive board member of the conglomerate's corporate venture arm Sonae IM, told Reuters it was looking for more companies to integrate with its Spain-based cybersecurity business S21Sec, acquired in 2014 and dealing with web fraud protection, dataleak detection and cyber threat alerts.
Sonae, which runs a stable of Continente-brand hypermarkets, electronic appliances stores Worten and other outlets, has a growing online retail business that needs cybersecurity.
Sonae IM also offers these services to clients and had sales of 123 million euros ($147 million) in the first nine months of 2017.
Sonae IM has recently announced its entry into the capital of German startup Secucloud which specialises in cloud-based security solutions for mobile networks, and U.S. firm Arctic Wolf, providing concierge security engineering services.
"We are looking for 'buy and build' opportunities to integrate with S21Sec ... There are also other segments for us to bet on like those where Arctic Wolf and Secucloud operate," Silva said.
($1 = 0.8389 euros)
(Reporting by Daniel Alvarenga; writing by Andrei Khalip; editing by Axel Bugge and Alexander Smith)
