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VeriSign beats 2Q
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July 26, 2001: 5:31 p.m. ET
Internet domain registar reports higher sales, higher net loss from year ago
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Internet domain registry and security firm VeriSign Inc. Thursday reported a sharply wider second-quarter net loss, yet beat Wall Street expectations, on sales that soared following its acquisition of Network Solutions.
For the quarter ended June 30, Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign (VRSN: Research, Estimates) reported earnings of $52.6 million, or 25 cents a share, compared with earnings of $10.3 million, or 7 cents a share, a year earlier.
Analysts on average anticipated a profit of 14 cents a share, according to earnings tracker First Call.
However, those results exclude a $9.9 billion write-down charge related to the company's acquisition of Network Solutions. Including the charge, VeriSign posted an $11.2 million loss for the quarter.
Second-quarter sales more than tripled to $231.2 million from $70.3 million.
VeriSign's shares ended down 7 cents at $47.17 ahead of the announcement Thursday.
VeriSign, which maintains the registry containing most of the Internet domains with the ".com," ".net" and ".org" suffixes, has been wracked by the burst tech bubble and ensuing dot.com shakeout in the last year as e-commerce firms folded. One by one, e-commerce firms realized they could not turn a profit on razor thin margins, or rely on Internet advertising, and many went out of business.
However, the company acquired Network Solutions last year, and earlier this year won the right from the federal government to exclusively maintain its registry for the next several years, helping it to post stronger sales in the quarter.
The company added 6.5 million new domain names to end the quarter with more than 16 million active domain names, up 36 percent from a year earlier.
"Our strong second-quarter results reflect the continued adoption of the Internet as a platform for Web services and global commerce," CEO Stratton Sclavos said. "While the macro-economic environment remains challenging, we remain confident that the demand for our infrastructure services will continue to grow throughout the remainder of the year." 
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VeriSign
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