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Verisign (VRSN) FY2025 results: revenue $1.7 billion, up 6.4% on the year

Verisign Inc. (VRSN) reported revenue of $1.7 billion for fiscal 2025, the year ended 31 December 2025, up 6.4% on the year before. Net income was $826 million, up 5.1%, and diluted earnings per share $8.81. The figures are the company's own, from the 10-K it filed with the SEC on 5 February 2026.

Revenue
$1.7 billion
+6.4% on the year
FY2018FY2025
Operating margin
67.7%
67.9% a year earlier
FY2018FY2025
Net income
$826 million
+5.1% on the year
FY2018FY2025
Diluted EPS
$8.81
+10.1% on the year
FY2018FY2025

this yearthe year beforeHover a bar for its figure.

The year in brief

What management said about the year

Guidance figures: 1 raised.

  • Fourth-quarter revenue and earnings rose: Revenue was $425 million, up 7.5 percent. Operating income was $285 million against $264 million, and diluted EPS was $2.23 against $2.00.
  • Full-year revenue rose 6.4 percent: Revenue for 2025 was $1.66 billion, up 6.4 percent. Operating income was $1.12 billion against $1.06 billion, and diluted EPS was $8.81 against $8.00.
  • Domain base reached 173.5 million: The .com and .net domain name base ended 2025 at 173.5 million registrations, up 2.6 percent from the end of 2024.
  • New registrations processed rose: The company processed 10.7 million new .com and .net registrations in the fourth quarter, against 9.5 million a year earlier.
  • Renewal rate rose to 75.4 percent: The final third-quarter renewal rate was 75.4 percent, against 72.2 percent in the same quarter of 2024. The release reports renewals for the third quarter.
Read the Q4 FY2025 earnings call summary

From this 10-K

Verisign runs the registries behind some of the internet's most used domain endings and part of the plumbing that makes domain names resolve into addresses. It provides registration services and authoritative resolution for the .com and .net top-level domains, performs the Root Zone Maintainer function for the core of the Domain Name System, and operates two of the thirteen global internet root servers. It was incorporated in Delaware on 12 April 1995 and is based in Reston, Virginia.

Verisign Inc., the 10-K for 2025

Verisign runs the registries behind some of the internet's most used domain endings and part of the plumbing that makes domain names resolve into addresses. It provides registration services and authoritative resolution for the .com and .net top-level domains, performs the Root Zone Maintainer function for the core of the Domain Name System, and operates two of the thirteen global internet root servers. It was incorporated in Delaware on 12 April 1995 and is based in Reston, Virginia.

What it operates

The company runs the authoritative directory for all .com, .net and .name domain names, for certain transliterations of .com and .net in other languages and scripts, and for all .cc domain names, and it operates the back-end systems for the .edu top-level domain. The .com, .net and .name domains and the internationalised versions run under registry agreements with ICANN, and .com additionally under a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce. The .cc domain runs under an agreement with Cocos (Keeling) Islands. The company also owns and maintains the Shared Registration System, through which registrars enter new second-level domain names into its central directories and submit modifications, transfers, re-registrations and deletions.

How it is paid

Domain names in the registries it operates can be registered for between one and 10 years. Prices for .com, .net and .name registrations are restricted by the ICANN agreements and may be raised only within those limits, with retail pricing set by the registrars themselves. The company pays ICANN $0.2575 quarterly for each annual .com registration and $0.25 for each annual .name registration, and remits a $0.75 fee per annual .net registration collected from registrars. Prices for .cc and the internationalised domains are not subject to the same restrictions, and the .edu back-end fee follows its own agreement.

The agreements that matter

The .com Registry Agreement runs a six-year term that must be renewed or extended by 30 November 2030; it contains what the filing calls a presumptive right of renewal, though ICANN could terminate or refuse renewal in certain prescribed circumstances. The Cooperative Agreement with the Department of Commerce, last amended in October 2018, renewed automatically on 30 November 2024 for a further six years and renews again on 30 November 2030 unless the department gives written notice at least 120 days before the end of the term. Under that amendment the company agreed to keep operating .com in a content-neutral manner. It may also ask the department to remove the .com pricing restrictions if it can show market conditions no longer warrant them. The .net Registry Agreement was renewed on 29 June 2023 for six years, must be renewed or extended by 1 July 2029, is not covered by the Cooperative Agreement, and allows the annual price for new and renewal .net registrations to rise by 10% a year.

The infrastructure

Operations run from secure data centres in Dulles and Ashburn in Virginia and New Castle in Delaware, plus more than 200 other points of presence around the world, and the servers process hundreds of billions of transactions a day. The design uses distributed high-speed servers with rapid failover and load balancing, a redundant global network with high-speed connections to numerous internet service providers and hundreds of interconnection relationships, and layered security including firewalls, intrusion detection, endpoint and network detection and response, continuous internal vulnerability testing, third-party penetration tests and a paid responsible disclosure programme. Data integrity checks include multiple stages of DNSSEC validation so that a corrupted change is rejected. Customer support runs 24 hours a day by phone, email, chat and self-service, and a network operations centre monitors the critical systems.

Competition

The company competes with other generic and country-code registries for registrations, and the filing names CentralNic, China Internet Network, DENIC eG, GoDaddy, Google, Identity Digital, Information Center, Nominet, Public Interest Registry, Radix and .xyz among them. It notes that its ICANN agreements restrict it on pricing, bundling, marketing, distribution, new registry services and use of registrars in ways that do not apply to other registries, which it says may put it at a competitive disadvantage. Growth is pursued through marketing campaigns and programmes aimed at .com, .net and .cc registrations, run through its registrars, with marketing and account management staff in several countries.

From Verisign's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 5 February 2026: read the full 10-K.

The four quarters: Q1 FY2025 · Q2 FY2025 · Q3 FY2025 · Q4 FY2025

Income statement (profit and loss)

$ millionFY2025FY2024FY2023On the yearLast 8 years
Revenue1,6571,5571,493+6.4%
Cost of revenue196191197+2.6%
Gross profit1,4601,3661,296+6.9%
Gross margin88.2%87.7%86.8%
Research and development10496.791.0+7.1%
Selling, general and administrative236211204+11.7%
Operating income1,1211,0581,001+5.9%
Operating margin67.7%67.9%67.0%
Interest expense77.075.375.3+2.3%
Pre-tax income1,0681,022976+4.6%
Income tax243236159+2.8%
Effective tax rate22.7%23.1%16.3%
Net income826786818+5.1%
Net margin49.8%50.4%54.8%
Diluted EPS$8.81$8.00$7.90+10.1%
$ million except per share.
Read moreFree cash flow is operating cash flow less capital expenditure; the effective tax rate is income tax over pre-tax income; margins are the line over revenue. Gross profit is revenue less cost of revenue, and operating income is revenue less the company's own total costs, where the statement does not print those lines. Those four are arithmetic on the filed numbers; everything else is as filed. Money is in $ million as the company files it, or in $ billion by the switch above the tables; per share figures and share counts are as they are.

Cash flow

$ millionFY2025FY2024FY2023On the yearLast 8 years
Operating cash flow1,091903854+20.9%
Capital expenditure22.828.145.8-18.9%
Free cash flow1,068874808+22.2%
Free cash flow margin64.5%56.2%54.1%
Cash from investing109286-97.4-61.9%
Cash from financing-1,103-1,222-890
Depreciation and amortisation31.236.944.1-15.4%
Share-based compensation69.761.159.7+14.1%
Buybacks8821,226901-28.1%
Dividends paid2150.00.0
Dividend per share$2.31$0.00$0.00
Diluted shares, weighted94m98m104m-4.5%
Shares outstanding at period end92m95m101m-3.3%

Balance sheet

$ millionFY2025FY2024FY2023On the yearLast 8 years
Shareholders' equity-2,154-1,958-1,581
Debt1,7881,7921,790-0.2%
Other liabilities1,6921,5721,540+7.6%
Total liabilities and equity1,3261,4061,749-5.7%
Fixed assets214224233-4.8%
Goodwill52.552.552.50.0%
Investments273393686-30.7%
Cash and equivalents308207240+49.0%
Receivables7.75.66.3+37.5%
Other assets472524531-10.0%
Total assets1,3261,4061,749-5.7%

10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025, filed 5 February 2026: the filing.