We believe that VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) (Price: $39.30) remains grossly overvalued and reiterate our Strong Sell and Short Sell recommendation. On May 3, 2001, Asensio & Company, Inc., an investment bank that conducts a specialty business in independent corporate valuations of excessively promoted companies, initiated research coverage on shares of VeriSign’s publicly traded common stock with a Strong Sell and Short Sell recommendation.
Analysts are expecting operating income growth to accelerate, even though in the last year during much better market conditions and with less competition, and from a lower base, revenue and operating income has sharply declined. VeriSign’s almost $8 billion market capitalization has fully discounted a very high likelihood that VeriSign will meet or exceed these growth expectations. This growth expectation is not fact-based and does not reconcile with price performance or conditions in its product market.
VeriSign’s revenues and income, pricing and market-share data all show well-established structural downtrends. Analysts continue to recommend the purchase of VeriSign shares despite the fact that its current stock price fully reflects the highly uncertain event that it will meet or exceed their unreasonable projections. We feel these recommendations and projections are based not on independent analysis of complete and transparent data, but instead are based on incomplete, inaccurate, highly managed morsels of highly questionable information provided by VeriSign.