VeriSign Reports Earnings: 9% More .com & Nets: Revenue Up 13%: But Is That So Great When They Get A Guaranteed 7% Increase?

VeriSign, Inc a stock we follow in our Domain Stock Index,  reported earnings for the 4th quarter after the market closed today.

And while the executives are busy patting themselves on the back for the great job they did to increase Verisign revenue 13% we can help but point out they VeriSign is guaranteed, like few companies on the planet, a 7% annual price increase in any 4 of 6 years they feel like increasing prices (this last year being one of them) without needing to show increased cost or a need for the price increase as utility companies have to.

But I digress.

Now back to the numbers:

VeriSign reported revenue of $179 million for the fourth quarter of 2010, up 4% from the prior quarter and up 13% from the same quarter in 2009.

Verisign reported net income of $54 million and earnings of $0.31 per share for the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to net income of $33 million and  $0.17 earnings per share in the same quarter in 2009.

“We are pleased with our performance this quarter, capping a strong year of execution in which the business continued to benefit from favorable Internet trends,” said Mark McLaughlin, president and chief executive officer of Verisign. “In 2011, we will continue to provide exceptional service to our customers and help them grow by providing services that address the reliability and availability demands of increased Internet usage and cloud computing.”

For the year ended December 31, 2010, Verisign reported revenue of $681 million, up 10% from $616 million in 2009.

Here are some other highlights from the report:

On December 10, Verisign announced a special cash dividend of $3.00 per share of its common stock or $518 million

Verisign ended the fourth quarter with Cash, Cash Equivalents, Marketable Securities and Restricted Cash of $2.063 billion

Nice

Now for some domain numbers from the report:

Verisign ended the quarter with approximately 105.2 million active domain names in the adjusted zone for .com and .net, representing a 9% increase year-over-year.

In the fourth quarter, Verisign added 7.6 million new domain name registrations, representing a 4% increase year-over-year.

Over the course of 2010, Verisign processed more than 22 trillion total queries, compared to 18 trillion in 2009

Verisign experienced an average daily query load of 61 billion during the 4th quarter, compared to 66 billion in the prior quarter and 52 billion in the same quarter in 2009.

Verisign ended the fourth quarter of 2010 with approximately 1,050 employees.

Shares of VeriSign are down fractionally after the report