IMGCAP(1)]
VeriFone Holdings Inc. continues to see intermittent opportunities to sell more point-of-sale terminals despite the ailing U.S. economy. Douglas G. Bergeron, VeriFone CEO, said during a conference call with analysts yesterday that multilane product sales held up better to the recession sales to small merchants, though the "very soft retail economy" and the closings of some chain stores hurt multilane terminal sales. The need for merchants to have secure payment systems that comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is driving many multilane deals, he says. Bergeron also cited hope for sales of petroleum terminals, which the card brands say must use secure data encryption by July 2010. Smaller merchants likely will not hold up as well, he indicated. "Clearly, this market is heavily dependent on the rate of new store openings, which is down significantly from previous years," Bergeron said. "New stores and restaurants are simply not being opened, and shopping centers and strip malls are not successfully replacing stores that close their doors in this recession." Bergeron expects VeriFone's fiscal 2009 revenue to be near flat versus 2008. "The great unknown is, will there be an recovery in the North America financial [market], i.e. processors and ISOs?" he said.
