NetScout Systems, Inc.

Please stand by, your program is about to begin. If you need audio assistance during today's program, please press star zero. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to NETSCOUT's first quarter fiscal 2026 financial results conference call. At this time, all parties are in a listen only mode until the question answer portion of the call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Paul Canavan, AVP, Corporate Finance, and his colleagues at NETSCOUT are on the line with us today. If you require operator assistance at any time, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the call over to Paul Canavan to begin the company's prepared remarks.

Thank you, Margo, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to NETSCOUT's first quarter fiscal year 2026 conference call for the period ended June 30th, 2025. Joining me today are Neil Singhal, NETSCOUT's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Tony Piazza, NETSCOUT's Executive Finance President and Chief Financial Officer. There is a slide presentation that accompanies our prepared remarks. You can advance the slides in the webcast viewer to follow our commentary. Both the slides and the prepared remarks can be accessed in multiple areas within the investor relations section of our website at www.netscout.com. including the IR landing page under financial results, the webcast itself, and under financial information on the quarterly results page. As discussed in detail on slide number three, today's conference call will include certain forward-looking statements about NETSCOUT's views on expected results of future performance and go-forward business strategy. These statements speak only as of today's date and involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that may cause actual results to differ materially, including but not limited to those described in the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As discussed in detail on slide number four, today's conference call will also include discussion of certain non-GAAP financial measures that the company believes to be useful for investors. While this slide presentation includes both GAAP and non-GAAP results, unless otherwise stated, financial information discussed on today's conference call will be on a non-GAAP basis only. The rationale for providing non-GAAP measures, along with the limitations of relying solely on those measures, is detailed on this slide and in today's financial results press release. These measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of all non-GAAP metrics to the nearest GAAP measures are provided in the appendix of the slide presentation in today's financial press release and on our website. I will now turn the call over to Anil for his prepared remarks.

Anil. Thank you, Paul, and good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us today. We delivered a solid start to fiscal year 2026 with Q1 performance reflecting strong execution and positive momentum across both our top and bottom lines. Growth in our cybersecurity and service assurance product lines supported these results as we continue to position NETSCOT for long-term success in the market. Let's turn to slide number six to review some non-GAAP financial highlights for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026. Revenue was approximately $187 million, representing a 7% year-over-year increase driven by strong growth in our cybersecurity area and the timing of orders received. We expanded both our gross and operating profit margins during the quarter and delivered non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of 34 cents and increase of approximately 21% year over year. This result reflects the benefit of restructuring and cost management initiatives that we executed in the past fiscal year. As such, These effects will begin to normalize in our year-over-year comparisons starting in the second quarter. Now let's move to slide number seven for some perspective on our business and some market insights. Starting with our service assurance offering, revenue in the first quarter increased approximately 1% year-over-year. The growth was driven by our enterprise customer vertical, which offset a decline in our service provider customer vertical. In the service assurance space, Our enterprise customers are investing in digital transformation initiatives, AI ops, and enhanced visibility at the network edge. We experience solid growth across most of our major sectors in this customer vertical. On the service provider side, we continue to see both domestic and international carriers invest in 5G-related initiatives. They are proceeding at a measured pace, Aligning investment will clearly define monetization opportunities, such as fixed wireless access and private 5G. While we remain mindful of ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, we believe NETSCOUT is well-positioned to capture further opportunities by delivering differentiated value in this evolving environment. This was recently demonstrated at the TM Forum's Neuronock Catalyst, where our Omni's AI Insight solution showcased how high-value network data can drive closed-loop automation and self-healing of networks. This provided strong validation of our ability to support AI-driven operations in complex 5G environments, reinforcing our role as a technology partner for next-generation telecom transformation. Moving to our cybersecurity operating, revenue in the first quarter increased approximately 18% year-over-year, driven by strong growth in both our enterprise and service provider customer verticals. Customers continue to prioritize spending in this area as they seek to protect themselves against an increasingly complex and expanding cyber threat landscape. We believe cybersecurity continues to represent a strong growth opportunity for NETSCOUT, and we continue to advance our portfolio with new innovations in this area. For example, we recently announced new AI-backed enhancements to our NETSCOT Arbor Edge Defense and NETSCOT Arbor Enterprise Manager adaptive distributed denial-of-service attack solutions to help customers further automate operations, enhance defense, and improve reporting. These powerful enhancements are designed to leverage AI and our Atlas intelligence. Feed to automate defenses against an expanding array of attack vectors, enabling customers to mitigate up to 80% of all DDoS attacks without the need for further analysis. We also announced that our Omni Cyber Intelligence Platform aligns with the NIST Zero Trust Security Framework. We believe this further reinforces our product offerings and strengthens our relevance as a strategic partner for the U.S. federal agencies in both service assurance and cybersecurity. Finally, we introduced adaptive threat analytics, a key enhancement to our Omni Network Detection Response, or NDR, solution. It empowers SOC analysts with faster, smarter incident response through continuous packet capture and enriched metadata. This innovation improves our competitiveness in a market where speed and precision in threat response are critical. Our solution continues to gain strong traction with customers seeking to enhance both visibility and cybersecurity capabilities, leading to robust multi-solution across three verticals. Notably, we secured a high seven-figure order earlier than anticipated with a U.S. government agency that has been a long-standing and loyal customer. This order consisted of both service-assured and cybersecurity solutions including our new Omnis AI and Cyber Intelligence product. This customer values our solution for the smart data we provide, which they are leveraging to enhance user experience and support AI-driven operations and initiatives. We also won a low seven-figure deal with major Latin American financial institutions, where we replaced two incumbent vendors in a competitive situation focused on online banking applications. This customer purchased both service-assured and cybersecurity solutions and is exploring our Omnis AI products. Our clear differentiator was our integrated platform, which combines cybersecurity performance and user experience visibility with valuable smart data to support AI of initiatives. These wins demonstrate the value of our innovative and integrated solutions, solid reputation, and strong customer relationship which help organization address the performance, availability, and security needs of the connected digital world. Additionally, they reflect the momentum we are building as we continue to execute our strategy. With that, let's now move to slide number eight to review our outlook. Looking ahead, we remain cautiously optimizing amid ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty. Our focus remains firmly on driving product innovations Returning to annual revenue growth and enhancing margin through discipline cost management. Based on the first quarter performance and solid pipeline, we are reaffirming our fiscal year 2026 revenue and non-GAAP EPS outlook. Tony will provide a recap of the outlook in his remarks. Looking ahead, during the second quarter, we are hosting our customers and partners at our annual Engage Technology and User Summit in late September in Arlington, Texas. As Engage 2025, we'll be showcasing both our existing solutions as well as our latest AIOps innovations. We'll demonstrate how our highly curated data drives improved business outcomes across key ecosystems, focusing on cybersecurity as well as network and service observability. We'll also be highlighting how our solution provides protection against modern days These are DDoS attacks with our AI-powered Arbor DDoS protection. Longer term, we are committed to empowering our customers to meet the demand of today's connected, complex digital landscape by delivering mission-critical solutions that address performance, ensure availability, and safeguard security. We look forward to sharing our progress with you throughout the remainder of our fiscal year. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tony.