Technology Update

Return to Article

VeriSign's Losses Widen

Priya Ganapati

SAN FRANCISCO --- Digital infrastructure services company VeriSign(VRSN Quote) reported higher losses in the second quarter in part because of restructuring-related charges.

The company posted net loss of $68 million, or 35 cents a share, that included a $92 million non-cash impairment charge and restructuring charges of $98 million. That compares with a net loss of $4.7 million, or 2 cents a share the year before.

Excluding charges, it reported net income of $49.8 million, or earnings of 25 cents a share, beating analysts' estimates by 2 cents.

Revenue rose to $303 million from $258.9 million a year ago. The company reported revenue from core operations of $233 million. On that basis, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting revenue of $231.4 million.

Shares of VeriSign were down 47 cents, or 1.4%, to $33.41.

Revenue from the company's core business -- Internet infrastructure and identity services --was up 21% from a year ago to $233 million.

VeriSign naming services division ended the second quarter with 87.3 million active domain names in the .com and .net areas, for a 20% increase from a year ago, said the company.

Non-core businesses for VeriSign delivered $70 million of revenue in the second quarter and revenue from discontinued operations was $89 million.

The company saw its SSL security services end the quarter with 1,056,000 SSL certificates in the installed base, up 14% from a year ago.

Two of VeriSign's competitors in security services -- McAfee(MFE Quote) and Symantec(SYMC Quote) -- posted strong results last week.

VeriSign's board of directors Tuesday approved an additional $680 million for share repurchases, bringing the total amount authorized for buybacks to $1 billion.