VeriSign Earnings Neither ScarySign Nor VeriBuy (VRSN)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Verisign_logo_2We have just seen earnings out of VeriSign Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN).  The web versions of "General Eclectic" has a very difficult to compare earnings report because of "total operations" and its core operations.  Its "total revenues was $303.2 million, which looks very high on the surface.  But its core revenues were $233 million and core non-GAAP EPS was $0.25.  First Call had estimates at $0.23 EPS on $231.39M in revenues. 

If the company gives guidance in its call, estimates for next quarterare $0.26 EPS on $240.59M in revenues and fiscal Dec-2008 estimates are$1.00 EPS on $947.36M in revenues.

The company did note that expense management added 400-basis points tomargin and resulted in $169 million cash flow in the quarter.  It endedwith $669 million in cash and equivalents and posted deferred revenueswas up $19 million sequentially to $780 million.

The company also added as of yesterday an additional buyback allowanceof $680 million, which would bring the total to $1 Billion.

These numbers are actually better than we would assumed with the recentmanagement departures and issues in the company.  We won’t call it awin or loss until formal guidance can be gleamed, but shares arelooking down over 2.5% at $33.00 in after-hours trading.

Jon C. Ogg
August 6, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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