If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) announced its strategic direction for 2008 at their annual analyst day held today in New York. The company is going to focus on its core activities, namely, domain names, the selling of web certificates (SSL), and identity protection services. As a result of this strategy, the company will divest its communications, billing and commerce businesses.

“The combination of focus and disciplined execution will provide the foundation we need to generate improved shareholder returns,” says Bill Roper, CEO. “We have leadership positions in great businesses with high growth, attractive economic returns and significant barriers to entry.”

In its third quarter results (PDF), VeriSign reported that its Internet Services Group made $236 million of revenue (up 21% from 2006). It also stated that the number of active domain names in .com and .net was about 77 million, representing a 5% increase over this year’s second quarter and a 25% increase over the third quarter in 2006. The consistent growth of VeriSign’s Internet Services Group makes it only logical for the company to focus on further growing and consolidating these core businesses. By divesting some of its other business units, VeriSign can also acquire more capital to reinvest in its DNS management, web certificate and identity protection services.