<p>ChoicePoint Inc. shares fell to a 52-week low after it reported Thursday a more than 4 percent drop in second-quarter profit on a nearly 6 percent increase in sales. The results missed Wall Street expectations.</p><p>The Alpharetta-based company, which collects, sells access to and analyzes consumers' personal information, said it earned $34.86 million, or 40 cents per share, for the three months ended June 30, compared to a profit of $36.42 million, or 40 cents per share, for the same period a year ago.</p><p>Excluding 2 cents of one-time items from its income from continuing operations of 39 cents per share, ChoicePoint earned 41 cents per share. On that basis, analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were expecting earnings of 45 cents per share.</p><p>Revenue in the quarter increased to $240.79 million, compared to $227.44 million in the same period a year ago.</p><p>ChoicePoint's shares fell $2.79, or 7.8 percent, to $33.21 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange, where its shares had been trading in a 52-week range of $35.29 to $46.85.</p><p>In January, ChoicePoint agreed to pay $15 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges related to allegations the company's security and record-handling procedures violated consumers' privacy rights when thieves infiltrated its massive database.</p><p>But another investigation of its top two executives by the Securities and Exchange Commission related to stock sales continues.</p><p>The data breach involved thieves posing as small business customers who gained access to ChoicePoint's database, possibly compromising the personal information of 163,000 Americans, according to the FTC.</p><p>The company discovered the breach more than four months before disclosing it to the public in February 2005. ChoicePoint has said authorities asked it to keep the information secret initially.</p><p>For the first six months of the year, ChoicePoint said it earned $65.47 million, or 74 cents a share, compared to earnings of $73.39 million, or 80 cents a share, for the same period a year ago. Six-month revenue rose to $476.78 million from $450.93 million recorded a year ago.</p><p>ChoicePoint collects data on individuals, including Social Security numbers, real estate holdings and current and former addresses. It also offers businesses, government agencies and nonprofit organizations software technology and information designed to anticipate and respond to economic and physical risk, and it analyzes information for the insurance sector. Its database contains about 19 billion records.</p><p>ChoicePoint expects full-year internal revenue growth from continuing operations to be in the range of 5 percent to 7 percent. Including the effect of acquisitions, total revenue growth is expected to be in the range of 6 percent to 8 percent for the full year, the company said Thursday.</p><p>___</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>HASH(0x1cdc220)</p>
