Re: [ga] Verisign stock price falls off a cliff

[William X Walsh <william@wxsoft.info>]

Just in case anyone still cares, VRSN was down another -1.82, -18.40%
from last week's close.

Poor Verisign  ;)

http://yahoo.smartmoney.com/onedaywonder/index.cfm?story=20020426&afl=yahoo

From the above article:

"We believe the company's core business could shrink for the next two
years," wrote Bear Stearns analyst Chris Kwak in a Friday research
note in which he cut his rating on the stock to Unattractive from
Attractive and his price target to $10 from $37. "We fear that 2002
and 2003 could be extraordinarily tough years for VeriSign, especially
since shrinkage in deferred revenue has already begun, hampering
visibility…. In our view, the company can no longer be categorized as
a growth story." Kwak doesn't own shares of VeriSign; Bear Stearns has
an investment-banking releationship with the company.


Saturday, April 27, 2002, 11:39:52 PM, Andy Gardner wrote:

> At 1:36 AM -0400 4/28/02, Sotiris Sotiropoulos wrote:
>>Well, Dan, here's what Stratton Sclavos had to say:
>>
>>"The sustained technology downturn definitely caught up with us," Chief
>>Executive Stratton Sclavos told analysts in a conference call after the
>>markets closed Thursday, citing a contraction in its domain name
>>business <http://news.com.com/2100-1023-826603.html> which provides
>>addresses for Internet sites."

> It's not the technology down turn that caught up with them - the base
> "technology" sector still requires pretty much the same number of domains
> as before.

> What caught up with them was:

> 1. Giving away net/org domains under a "protect your name" scam, putting
> them on the books as sales, and having to delete the lot when the
> registrants see through the scam and don't bother renewing at their
> inflating registration fees.

> 2. Giving speculators  credit to register speculative names, only to find
> said speculators couldn't unload the names, didn't want to renew them and
> couldn't pay their account at NSI. Just one speculator unearthed involved
> more than 1 million dollars worth of unpaid credit (a Belgian doctor), and
> saw NSI attempting to recover their costs by selling the names through a
> special account at their "Great Domains" auction site. Very few sold at the
> "special price" would required a 2 year registration through NSI. Other
> cases were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And there were probably
> thousands of smaller cases that added up to a fair amount as well. I wonder
> if the shareholders ever got to read about that little cock-up in the
> financial statements?

> 3. Then there's their latest little game to try and take the seam out of
> .biz by offering the near-equivalent .bz (belize). After buying the rights
> to that ccTLD, I think the dollar signs in Verisign's eyes disappeared when
> the results of their big domain sale via eBay came in:
> http://www.stores.ebay.com/store=47260199  computers/bz and gay.bz for only
> $10,000. WHAT A BARGAIN. All those expensive names and no bids. One must
> wonder how much they paid for the rights to .bz? Another profit centre that
> looks like it's going to be debt item for Verisign. And do the shareholders
> know about it? Not bloody likely!

> Note that Verisign has zero user feedback becuase so far it's failed to
> make a sale (all those names are now onto their second auction attempt).
> $10000 to register a name - is Verisign trying to be like idealabs?

> 4. Then there's their recent postal-fraud attempt at sending out disguised
> invoices with domain transfer terms hidden in the small print.

> 5. And there's all the sideline ideas the registry is trying to run to try
> and keep their finger in all the pies - keywords, IDN, webnumbers, phone
> registries. Pulllease.

> 6. And the continued attempts to block transfers out of their registrar.

> 7. And the continued ineptness that sees people lose their domains on a
> daily basis due to NSI's billing database mess.

> When the shareholder finally see these guys for what they really are and it
> turns into a penny stock, is ICANN ready to rescue the registry system and
> assign it to a company that is happy to be the C/N registry, do it well,
> and not get sidetracked into the other bullshit? THAT should be a security
> requirement for the largest registry on the planet.

> Wkae up ICANN! All your corporate funders are going down the toilet! TIme
> to actually start doing something, rather than just feathering your nest
> with your projected revenues!





-- 
Best regards,
William X Walsh <william@wxsoft.info>
--
Save Internet Radio!  
CARP will kill Webcasting!
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