VeriSign, Inc. (VRSN) recently announced that the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Brian Robins resigned from his positions effective September 7, 2011 to pursue other opportunities.
VeriSign, however, reaffirmed its guidance for 2011 and stated that the resignation would not have an adverse impact on the company’s financial statements or the results of its operations.
VeriSign stated that the company will soon name an interim CFO. The news led to an 8.14% decline in the stock price in after-hours trading, which closed at $31.15%. In regular trading, the stock was down 1.71%.
The day before, VeriSign’s stock price gained 7.61% in regular trading amid speculations of a possible takeover.
Earlier, Mark McLaughlin resigned as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) effective August 1, 2011. Jim Bidzos, Verisign’s founder and former CEO has taken over.
VeriSign has been restructuring its business since 2007. VeriSign decided to focus its attention on its core competencies to provide highly scaleable, reliable and secure Internet infrastructure services to customers around the world. Hence, the company divested a number of non-core businesses in its portfolio, such as communications, billing and commerce, content delivery, messaging and enterprise security services.
Most recently, the company sold its Authentication Services business to Symantec Corp. (SYMC) following the sale, continuing operations primarily consist of Naming Services (comprising Registry Services and Network Intelligence and Availability (NIA) Services).
It remains to be seen how the business shapes up with the departure of the management team who were primarily responsible for streamlining the company.
VeriSign expects revenues between $765 million and $775 million in 2011, up 12% to 14% year over year and up from the earlier guidance of a growth of 11% – 14%. Excluding one-time items and stock based compensation expenses; gross margin is projected at around 79%.
