What Happened?
Shares of domain name registry operator Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) fell 8.5% in the morning session after news that major shareholder Berkshire Hathaway sold a significant portion of its stake in the company at a discount. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway announced it sold 4.3 million shares of the company in a secondary offering. The shares were priced at $285 each, representing a discount of nearly 7% to VeriSign's previous closing price. The sale, which raised approximately $1.23 billion for Berkshire, reduced its ownership stake in VeriSign from 14.2% to 9.6%. The move was primarily motivated by regulatory reasons, as dropping below the 10% ownership threshold allows Berkshire to avoid stricter reporting requirements from the Securities and Exchange Commission. VeriSign itself did not sell any shares in the offering and received no proceeds from the transaction.
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What Is The Market Telling Us
VeriSign’s shares are not very volatile and have only had 3 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful, although it might not be something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 4 days ago when the stock gained 6.5% on the news that the company reported strong second-quarter financial results that beat earnings expectations and demonstrated healthy revenue growth. The internet infrastructure provider posted revenue of $410 million, marking a 5.9% increase from the prior year's quarter. VeriSign's earnings per share came in at $2.21, slightly ahead of consensus estimates. The positive results were supported by solid operational metrics, including an improved domain renewal rate of 75.5% and an increase in its .com and .net domain name base. In a move signaling confidence, the company's board also authorized a substantial share repurchase plan. Following the impressive quarter, investment firm Baird raised its price target on the stock to $340.
VeriSign is up 34% since the beginning of the year, but at $274.74 per share, it is still trading 10.2% below its 52-week high of $305.98 from July 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of VeriSign’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $1,316.
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