VeriSign Again Lists Quarterly Profit

VeriSign Inc. reported a second straight quarterly profit Thursday after four years of losses, citing an increase in telecommunications deals.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet infrastructure and services firm said it earned $22 million, or 9 cents a share, on revenue of $256 million.

A year earlier, it lost $143 million, or 60 cents, on sales of $265 million.

“Their businesses are accelerating faster than we would have expected,” said Pacific Crest Equities analyst Robert Owens. “The turnaround continues.”

VeriSign shares rose 47 cents to $17.97 in regular Nasdaq trading, then fell as low as $17.15 in late trading after the company issued its earnings report.

Best known for its former ownership of Network Solutions Inc., which assigned names to website addresses, VeriSign still gets more than half its revenue from Internet services, including the management of the massive computers that direct Web users to pages ending in “.com” and “.net.”

The Internet side of VeriSign also handles security for electronic business and authenticates payments. In the latest quarter, it introduced tools for fighting unwanted e-mail and “phishing” attacks, which try to deceive recipients to obtain credit card numbers, passwords or other sensitive financial information.

The communications side of the company, which connects wireless phone users to those on other networks and handles billing and other matters, brought in $117 million in the quarter.

The billing operations added about 300,000 subscribers, bringing the total coverage to 6.3 million.