VeriSign, Inc.

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

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to VeriSign's third 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 Bidzos, Executive Chairman and CEO, Todd Strube, President and COO, and George Kilgus, Executive Vice President and CFO. 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 third 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. VeriSign does not update 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. GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation information is appended to the slide presentation, which can 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 afterwards, 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. Today, VeriSign reports $318 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 3.1% from the same quarter a year ago. But before we dive deeper into our results, I wanted to speak just a bit about COVID-19 and how we're addressing it within VeriSign. With the increased demand for and the lack of online services during the COVID-19 pandemic, secure and reliable operation of our infrastructure has become even more important. Our focus remains on our mission, which is to ensure the availability of our critical internet infrastructure for the benefit of internet users. We continue to operate our registry services for COM and NET and our read operations at the rigorous standards of performance and availability governed by our agreements with ICANN, while most of our employees continue to work remotely. Now I'll address our quarterly results. The third quarter of 2020 was another consistent quarter for VeriSign in which we focused on our core business, expanded the domain name base and delivered solid financial results. Regarding third quarter operational highlights, at the end of September, the domain name base in .com and .net totaled 163.7 million, consisting of 150.3 million names for .com and 13.4 million names for .net, with a year-over-year growth rate of 4%. During the third quarter, we processed 10.9 million new registrations, and the domain name base increased by 1.65 million names. Although renewal rates are not fully measurable until 45 days after the end of the quarter, we believe that the renewal rate for the third quarter of 2020 will be approximately 73.4%. This preliminary rate compares to 73.7% achieved in the third quarter of 2019 and 72.8% last quarter. For 2020, we now expect a domain name-based growth rate of between 3.5 and 4%. This updated range reflects the strength we have seen in new registrations and our expectations for domain name-based growth for the remainder of the year, balanced with the ongoing uncertainty presented by COVID-19. During the third quarter, we continued our share repurchase program that resulted in 823,000 shares of common stock repurchased for $170 million. At quarter end, $506 million remained available and authorized under the current share repurchase program, which has no expiration date. Our financial and liquidity position remained stable with $1.15 billion 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. And now I'd like to turn the call over to George.