Network Solutions Fall Tied To Broad Based Selloff..This happened to NSOL once before and the stock went on to quadruple.. I don't expect it to quadruple, but I think its only fair that with 100% increase in EPS an 117% increase in revenue we should see a nice comeback.
Network Solutions {NSOL} announced record fourth quarter revenues of $31 million as the Internet domain name registrar beat Street estimates, posting a $0.22 earnings per share number in the same quarter. The revenue rise represented a 117% increase, while the net income rose 100% from last year's $0.11 EPS in the same quarter.
Network Solutions" revenue more than doubled in 1998 as we registered more than 1.9 million net new domain names," said Michael A. Daniels, chairman and acting chief executive officer, Network Solutions in a conversation with Comtex News this morning.. "The growth helped us increase our entire registration base by 118 percent in 1998, bringing total registrations of 1.5 million domain names at the end of 1997 to a new high of nearly 3.4 million domain names at the close of 1998."
Peeking at a $241 high on the 29th of January 1999, the Network Solutions stocks has since plummeted exactly 100 points with yesterday's $141 close. Hambecht & Quist analyst James Pettit, in a note to his clients this morning, tied the stock's weakness to the Internet industry as a whole and not the individual efforts of the firm. Mr. Pettit also said, "Although the company beat my EPS estimate by $0.02, I believe that the more important number is net new registrations. Network's 621,000 net new registrations beat my 507,000 estimate."
Mr. Pettit equates this registration growth to a "franchise building game". Mr. Korzeniewski, Network Solutions CFO, spoke on this aforementioned registration increase this morning. "In the fourth quarter we saw continued growth in dot com Web addresses, increasing our entire registration base 21 percent in the past quarter alone. This growth contributed to our ninth consecutive quarter of increasing profitability," said Mr. Korzeniewski.
Hambecht & Quist analyst Pettit
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