VeriSign (NASDAQ:VRSN) Sees Large Volume Increase – What’s Next?

Shares of VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) saw an uptick in trading volume on Wednesday. Approximately 735,955 shares were traded during trading, a decline of 9% from the previous session’s volume of 809,855 shares. The stock last traded at $295.0720 and had previously closed at $293.10.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several research firms have recently weighed in on VRSN. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upped their target price on shares of VeriSign from $308.00 to $316.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, July 24th. Zacks Research downgraded shares of VeriSign from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Wednesday, September 23rd. Weiss Ratings restated a “buy (b-)” rating on shares of VeriSign in a research report on Monday, September 21st. Finally, Wedbush upped their price objective on shares of VeriSign from $324.00 to $341.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, September 1st. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and two have assigned a Hold rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $333.00.

VeriSign Price Performance

The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $290.40 and a 200 day simple moving average of $279.66. The company has a market cap of $26.89 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 32.30 and a beta of 0.69.

VeriSign (NASDAQ:VRSN) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, July 23rd. The information services provider reported $2.38 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.36 by $0.02. The company had revenue of $434.60 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $433.19 million. VeriSign had a negative return on equity of 39.20% and a net margin of 49.76%.The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 6.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the company posted $2.21 earnings per share. As a group, sell-side analysts anticipate that VeriSign, Inc. will post 9.59 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

VeriSign Dividend Announcement

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, August 27th. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, August 19th were paid a $0.81 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Wednesday, August 19th. This represents a $3.24 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.1%. VeriSign’s payout ratio is currently 35.14%.

Insider Activity

In other news, CEO D. Bidzos sold 3,300 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, July 28th. The shares were sold at an average price of $281.20, for a total transaction of $927,960.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 412,939 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $116,118,446.80. This represents a 0.79% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold 39,800 shares of company stock worth $11,450,078 in the last quarter. 0.56% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Berkshire Hathaway Inc acquired a new stake in shares of VeriSign in the 2nd quarter valued at $2,261,494,000. BlackRock Inc. bought a new position in VeriSign in the second quarter valued at about $2,116,154,000. State Street Corp boosted its holdings in VeriSign by 1.8% in the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 4,150,727 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $1,044,157,000 after acquiring an additional 73,583 shares during the last quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC boosted its holdings in VeriSign by 1.4% in the first quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 2,818,151 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $699,916,000 after acquiring an additional 38,800 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Hawk Ridge Capital Management LP increased its position in VeriSign by 48.5% in the first quarter. Hawk Ridge Capital Management LP now owns 915,012 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $227,252,000 after purchasing an additional 298,895 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 92.90% of the company’s stock.

VeriSign Company Profile

VeriSign, Inc (NASDAQ:VRSN) provides critical internet infrastructure and domain name registry services. The company operates the authoritative registries for the .com and .net top-level domains and supports the security, stability and availability of these domains worldwide. VeriSign also operates the .name and .cc registries and provides backend registry services for additional top-level domains.

In addition to registry operations, VeriSign offers domain name system (DNS) services designed to help organizations maintain reliable online access.