VeriSign, Inc.

Everyone, welcome to VeriSign's first quarter 2023 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. Recording of this call is not permitted unless pre-authorized. At this time, I would 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 2023 earnings call. Joining me 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 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 report on Form 10-K. 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. 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. Thank you, David.

Good afternoon to everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm pleased to report another solid quarter of operational and financial performance for VeriSign. We delivered these results while continuing to strengthen our critical internet infrastructure and complying with the high operational standards required by our ICANN agreements. For the first quarter, revenues grew 5.1% year-over-year, while EPS grew 19% year-over-year. At the end of March, the domain name base in .com and .net totaled 174.8 million domain names with a year-over-year growth rate of 0.1%. During the first quarter, the domain name base increased by just over 1 million domain names. From a new registration perspective, the first quarter delivered a modest year-over-year increase with 10.3 million new registrations compared to 10.2 million last year and 9.7 million last quarter. Our renewal rates remain stable. We believe that the renewal rate for the first quarter of 2023 will be approximately 75.6% compared to the 73.3% final renewal rate last quarter and 75.9% a year ago. Having seen modest improvement in the registration trend during Q1, we now expect a domain name based growth rate of between 0.5 and 2.25% for the full year of 2023. This updated range reflects the current macroeconomic uncertainty and recent trends in our business. Our financial and liquidity position remains stable, with $1.15 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities at the end of the quarter. Share repurchases during the first quarter totaled $220 million for 1.1 million shares. At quarter end, $639 million remained available and authorized under the current share repurchase program, which has no expiration. As many of you are aware, we are in a process of renewing the .NET registry agreement with ICANN as the current term ends on June 30th. Consistent with ICANN's usual process, on April 13th, ICANN posted the new .NET registry agreement for public comment, which is open until May 25th. The business terms of the agreement, such as pricing, the fees paid to ICANN, our renewal rights, and the six-year term of the agreement are all unchanged. Regarding .web, on Monday, ICANN's website published a notice of a scheduled Board of Directors meeting to take place this Sunday. One of the Board's agenda items is to further consider the .web IRP final declaration. ICANN then published the minutes from two BAMC meetings, one held on January 31st, which discussed the BAMC's consideration of certain recommendations related to .web, and also the minutes from a meeting on March 2nd, which state that the BAMC approved recommendations related to .web and requested that those recommendations be sent to the board. We believe that this new information published this week means progress towards a final resolution is being made, but beyond what was posted, we have no updates. And now I'd like to turn the call over to George. I will return when George has completed his financial report with closing remarks.