NeuStar revenues on the rise

Preliminary first-quarter results for NeuStar show a 26% increase in revenue over last year’s first quarter, but net income was down slightly. Based in part on new business in Asia such as international domain name services in Chinese and Japanese and managing a new DNS for Hong Kong, the company maintained its projections of a 28% revenue growth this year from 2006.

NeuStar should generate between $96.5 million and $97.5 million in the first quarter. Non-GAAP Adjusted Net Income for the first quarter is expected to range between $20.9 million and $21.9 million. Last year the company had $19.9 million.

Number portability in the U.S. generated 71.2 million transactions, 32% over last year’s first quarter. It anticipates managing 290 million transactions in 2007. NeuStar expects first-quarter revenue from its Next Generation Messaging services to exceed $500,000 on customer billings of approximately $4.1 million.

NeuStar isn’t in the habit of providing preliminary results and unless called for probably won’t again. Jeff Babka, CFO of NeuStar, said numerous investor questions led the company to believe investors may have been confused about some pricing changes, its major contracts and the acquisition of Followap.

NeuStar reaffirmed its projections for full-year 2007 revenue at between $428 million and $438 million.

The company also announced a senior management change. It named Raymond Saulino as its new senior vice president of sales and business development. John Malone, who held that position previously, is leaving NeuStar to pursue other interests. Saulino joined NeuStar a year ago after four years with Affiliated Computer Systems. Prior to that, he was a founder, president and COO of PRWT Services, a Lockheed Martin IMS business partner.

Early last monthNeuStar named Lawrence Bouman as its new chief operating officer, replacing Michael Lach. Bouman has served as a senior advisor to NeuStar management since 1999. Prior to that he was senior vice president and chief technology officer of long distance provider LCI International. Bouman also served in leadership roles at MCI and was a member of the board of MetaSolv.

On March 22, NeuStar announced it had deployed internationalized domain names for both the Chinese and the Japanese languages in the .BIZ top-level Internet domain. BIZ IDNs enable companies and for-profit organizations worldwide to register domain names in their languages of choice. NeuStar has offered .BIZ IDNs in Spanish, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish since November 2006, and in German since 2004.

“All of our services are getting a good hard look in Asia,” said Mark Smith, vice president of the Mobile Market Group.

That same week, NeuStar said it had been awarded a two-year extension of its contract to provide Secondary DNS services for .HK, Hong Kong’s top-level Internet domain. The Hong Kong Internet Registration Corp., Ltd. (HKIRC) is responsible for the management of the TLD. The original contract was executed in November 2005.