VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) Stock Has Average Price Target of $333.00

VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) has been assigned an average recommendation of “Moderate Buy” from the six brokerages that are currently covering the company, MarketBeat Ratings reports. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold recommendation and four have given a buy recommendation to the company. The average 1 year price objective among analysts that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $333.00.

Several research analysts have weighed in on the company. Weiss Ratings reissued a “buy (b-)” rating on shares of VeriSign in a research report on Monday, September 21st. Wedbush raised their target price on VeriSign from $324.00 to $341.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, September 1st. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted their target price on VeriSign from $308.00 to $316.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, July 24th. Finally, Zacks Research downgraded shares of VeriSign from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Wednesday, September 23rd.

Insider Activity at VeriSign

In other news, CEO D. Bidzos sold 3,300 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, July 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $266.09, for a total transaction of $878,097.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 422,839 shares in the company, valued at approximately $112,513,229.51. This represents a 0.77% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last 90 days, insiders sold 40,050 shares of company stock worth $11,430,794. 0.56% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On VeriSign

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. QRG Capital Management Inc. grew its stake in VeriSign by 25.1% in the 2nd quarter. QRG Capital Management Inc. now owns 4,765 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $1,199,000 after buying an additional 955 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp boosted its holdings in shares of VeriSign by 1.8% in the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 4,150,727 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $1,044,157,000 after acquiring an additional 73,583 shares during the period. Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC boosted its holdings in shares of VeriSign by 28.2% in the second quarter. Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC now owns 6,612 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $1,663,000 after acquiring an additional 1,454 shares during the period. Archford Capital Strategies LLC grew its position in shares of VeriSign by 2.2% in the second quarter. Archford Capital Strategies LLC now owns 4,062 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $1,022,000 after purchasing an additional 86 shares in the last quarter. Finally, National Pension Service grew its holdings in VeriSign by 971.9% during the 2nd quarter. National Pension Service now owns 171,145 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $43,053,000 after buying an additional 155,179 shares in the last quarter. 92.90% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

VeriSign Price Performance

Shares of VRSN stock opened at $288.32 on Tuesday. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $289.53 and a 200-day moving average of $277.88. VeriSign has a one year low of $208.86 and a one year high of $312.48. The company has a market cap of $26.04 billion, a P/E ratio of 31.27 and a beta of 0.69.

VeriSign (NASDAQ:VRSN) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, July 23rd. The information services provider reported $2.38 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.36 by $0.02. The business had revenue of $434.60 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $433.19 million. VeriSign had a net margin of 49.76% and a negative return on equity of 39.20%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 6.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $2.21 earnings per share. As a group, research analysts expect that VeriSign will post 9.59 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

VeriSign Dividend Announcement

The company 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 was Wednesday, August 19th. This represents a $3.24 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.1%. VeriSign’s payout ratio is presently 35.14%.

About VeriSign

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.