VeriSign, Inc.

Please stand by. Good day, everyone. Welcome to VeriSign's first quarter 2020 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. Recording of this call is not permitted unless preauthorized. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. David Atchley, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Treasurer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to VeriSign's first quarter 2020 earnings call. Thank you to everyone for joining our call today, and we hope each of you are staying safe and healthy. Joining me remotely from their respective locations are Jim Vidzos, Executive Chairman and CEO, Todd Strube, President and COO, and George Kilgus, Executive Vice President and CFO. Thank you in advance for your patience if we experience any interference, delays, or sound quality issues during today's call. This call and presentation are being webcast from the Investor Relations website, which is available under About VeriSign on VeriSign.com. There you will also find our first quarter 2020 earnings release. At the end of this call, the presentation will be available on that site, and within a few hours, the replay of the call will be posted. Financial results in our earnings release are unaudited, and our remarks include forward-looking statements that are subject to the risks and uncertainties that we discuss in detail in our documents filed with the SEC, specifically the most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which identify risk factors that would cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. VeriSign retains its long-standing policy not to comment on financial performance or guidance during the quarter, unless it is done through a public disclosure. The financial results in today's call and the matters we will be discussing today include GAAP results and two non-GAAP measures used by VeriSign, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. Gaps and non-gap reconciliation information is appended to the slide presentation, which will be found on the investor relations section of our website, available after this call. In a moment, Jim and George will provide some prepared remarks, and afterward, we will open the call for your questions. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Jim.

Thanks, David, and good afternoon, everyone. As people work to address the global challenges posed by COVID-19, we are focused on protecting our people, managing our operations, supporting our local communities, and helping small businesses through our channel partners. While the issues posed by COVID-19 are unprecedented, they fall within our standard preparation for disruption caused by local, regional, and global events. The company's readiness plans, which are routinely exercised, include the ability to maintain critical internet infrastructure with most employees working remotely. We are prepared to continue to operate all of our services including registry services for .com and .net, and our route operations at the rigorous standards of performance governed by ICANN, even in the demanding environment created by COVID-19. Additionally, to help our local communities, as announced in March, we made an initial $2 million donation during the first quarter to first responders and medical personnel in the Northern Virginia area, the United Way's Worldwide COVID-19 Community Response and Recovery Fund, and the Semper Fi and Americas Fund. To protect our people, manage our operations, help communities, and help small business through our channel partners can be found in our company blog, which is available at VeriSign.com. Now I'd like to address updates and first quarter results. I'm able to report another solid quarter for VeriSign in which we focused on our core business, expanded the domain name base, and delivered consistent financial results. On March 27th, we announced that VeriSign and ICANN entered into the Third Amendment to the dot-com registry agreement and a separate binding letter of intent, which formalized a new framework for ICANN and VeriSign to work together on initiatives related to the security, ability, and resiliency system. We are pleased with the outcome of the process and remain confident that these agreements will serve the public interest by providing pricing certainty and by helping both the security, stability, resilience, .com, and the critical Internet functions it supports globally. In addition, we announced that in light of the global disruption caused by COVID-19, we have registered fees for all PLDs, including .com and .net, through the end of 2020. As we stated last quarter regarding the letter of intent, one-time commitment to provide $4 million per year over five years beginning on January 1st, 2021, for ICANN to support activities to preserve and enhance the security, stability, and resiliency of the DNS and the Internet. We believe that the activities funded by this commitment will benefit the entire Internet community. Also, as an update, in February, Todd Strube was promoted from Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer to President and Chief Operating Officer, further strengthening our senior management team. Relating to first quarter operational highlights, at the end of March, the domain name base in .com and .net totaled 160.7 million, consisting of 147.3 million names for .com and 13.4 million names for .net, with a year-over-year growth rate of 3.8%. During the first quarter, we processed 10 million new registrations, and the domain name base increased by 1.83 million names. Although our renewal rates are not fully measurable until 45 days after the end of the quarter, we believe that the renewal rate for the first quarter of 2020 will be approximately 75.4%. This preliminary rate compares to 75.0 achieved in the first quarter of 2019 and 73.8% in the fourth quarter of 2019. By the way, our press release that we just released this afternoon has a typo, and in the sentence that I just read in the press release, it says in the fourth quarter of 2020 instead of the fourth quarter of 2019 when it mentions the 73.8% renewal rate. So the fourth quarter of 2019 renewal rate was 73.8%, and the typo says fourth quarter of 2020. That's getting ahead of yourself, I suppose. So I just wanted to point out that typo. So back to the business. For 2020, we now expect a domain name-based growth rate of between 2 and 3.75%. Recognizing the uncertainty presented by COVID-19, this updated range reflects a more cautious view of domain name-based growth for the balance of the year. During the first quarter, we continued our share repurchase program that resulted in 1.3 million shares of common stock repurchased for $245 million. At March 31, 2020, $826 million remained available and authorized under the current share repurchase program, which has no expiration. Our financial and liquidity position remains strong with $1,139,000,000 in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities at the end of the quarter. We continually evaluate the overall liquidity and investing needs of the business and consider the best uses for our cash, including potential share repurchases. Now I'd like to turn the call over to George.