McAfee The Company Really Wishes McAfee The Man Could Have Found Some Other Moment To Be Arrested For Tax Evasion

For the first time in a decade, antivirus software pioneer McAfee Corp. will be a publicly-traded company again sometime today. Yesterday, its shares priced at $20 apiece, at the low end of its projected range.

The company and some of its investors sold 37 million shares for $20 apiece Wednesday, according to a statement. McAfee had marketed 31 million shares for $19 to $22, while its shareholders offered 6 million shares.

We’re sure there are good, fundamental reasons for this: While McAfee posted a profit for the first half of the year as compared to a $146 million loss in the first half of last year, its net income was just $31 million over that period on $1.4 billion in revenue, the latter number itself up a smidge from the year-earlier period. Still, we’re sure McAfee would have preferred not to go public while its namesake—who, in fairness, has had nothing to do with the company in more than 25 years—sits in a Spanish jail cell awaiting extradition to the U.S. on charges of tax evasion vis-à-vis his cryptocurrency ventures, especially since such things tend to bring back to the surface all sorts of other unsavory things.