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Technology Stocks : VeriSign (VRSN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patriarch who wrote (819)	12/20/1999 6:02:00 PM
From: Patriarch	Respond to of 1285

VeriSign to buy two specialist firms By Mike Tarsala, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 5:06 PM ET Dec 20, 1999 NewsWatch Net Stocks MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (CBS.MW) -- VeriSign Inc. on Monday said it plans to buy two specialists in its field of digital-identification security software and electronic-payment systems for $1.3 billion. The acquisition of privately held Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Signio Inc. for $735 million is expected to give VeriSign (VRSN: news, msgs) a new sales avenue by helping it offer services for taking Internet payments. Up to now, VeriSign has specialized in so-called Internet authentication. "The services we've provided for the past four years have focused on trying to identify who it is that you're dealing with over the Internet," Stratton Sclavos, VeriSign's chief executive, said in an interview with CBS.MarketWatch.com. "But it's become clear that identity and payment are inherently linked." Signio is expected to help VeriSign connect online merchants, Internet-based buyer-seller networks and financial institutions. It can be a more complex task than verification, analysts say. But it's also a good fit with what VeriSign already does. "If you're going to do one, it's logical that you'd want to do the other," said Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst with CIBC World Markets Corp. in New York. In addition, VeriSign said it will pay $575 million for South Africa-based Thwarte Consulting, a privately held provider of digital certificates. By integrating Thwarte's technologies, VeriSign hopes to create a set of worldwide standards companies will use for digital certificates. VeriSign has been one of the hottest stocks this year, rising more than 750 percent. While digital certificate software is a relatively new market, VeriSign's rise is attributed to its software that can grow to support very large companies, CIBC's Pyykkonen said. "If the Internet is pretty unpredictable, VeriSign is the underlying fabric, enabling commerce behind-the-scenes," Pyykkonen said. "They have a pretty predictable business outlook. It's still a relatively small market -- it's not as if one company owns this space yet. But VeriSign wants to become the hub of e-commerce activity, tying in the back-end processing for authentication and electronic payments." The company plans to add to its services in the future, Sclavos said. One possible move could be to offer services for digital receipts and payment validation that record when a transaction over the Internet took place, Sclavos said. "Now we can answer questions like, 'who is it,' and 'can you pay,' " Sclavos said. "The next step might be to answer, 'can you prove it?' " VeriSign shares closed Monday at 150 1/8, up 19 3/16