Data compression company Stac Inc has now completed the spin-off of its OEM networking products subsidiary Hi/fn Inc, and will concentrate on software, renaming itself Stac Software Inc to emphasize its new direction. San Diego, California-based Stac has distributed one share of Hi/fn common stock for every 3.9455 shares of Stac common stock held, as a dividend. Hi/fn began trading on Nasdaq under its own HIFN ticker symbol yesterday. Stac shares were trading ex-dividend. Stac began as a fabless semiconductor company, but is most famous for the Stacker PC disk compression software that was ubiquitous during the early 1990s. That market disappeared once Microsoft included compression technology within MS-DOS 6.6 (CI No 2,175). Stac now sees itself concentrating on enterprise storage management software such as its Replica backup and disaster recovery software and ReachOut remote management tool. It has OEM and reseller agreements with Hewlett-Packard Co, IBM Corp, Legato Systems Inc, Microsoft Corp, Network Associates Inc and Novell Inc. Hi/fn, which already has a separate base in Los Gatos, California, makes semiconductors and software for manufacturers of computer networking products. It was formed by Stac in September 1996 from its former Technology Business Unit to target OEM sales of its hardware-based compression technology at the router, firewall and remote access server markets. Hi/fn acquired Sunnyvale-based CyLAN Technologies Inc, a developer of network security software for embedded systems, in April 1998. Most of the network router manufacturers now use Hi/fn technology to improve data packet processing, and Quantum Corp uses Hi/fn compression processors in its DLT tape drives. Hi/fn made $2.2m profit for the year ending September 1998 on revenues of $21.5m. Stac’s software revenues for the same period were $19.4m, but the company posted a net loss of $7.8m for the year, including a one-off charge related to the spin-off of $6.4m.