VeriSign, Inc.

Good day, everyone. Welcome to VeriSign's first quarter 2024 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. Recording of this call is not permitted unless pre-authorized. 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 2024 earnings call. Joining me are Jim Bidzos, Executive Chairman, President, and CEO, 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 gap results and two non-gap measures used by VeriSign, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. Gap to non-gap 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. In addition to continuing to deliver on our mission as a critical internet infrastructure provider, we delivered solid and consistent financial results during the first quarter. These results show the continued financial strength of our business model. For the first quarter, revenues grew 5.5% year over year, operating income grew 7.3% year over year, and earnings per share grew 12.9% year over year. At the end of March, the domain name base in .com and .net totaled 172.5 million domain names, down 270,000 names from year-end 2023. From a new registration perspective, the first quarter ended with 9.5 million new registrations compared with 10.3 million names for the same quarter last year. The renewal rate for the first quarter of 2024 is expected to be approximately 74% compared to 75.5% a year ago. As we discussed last quarter, we expect our domains under management from our China-based registrars to contract in 2024. In the first quarter, this segment declined by 360,000 names. For the reasons noted in prior quarters, this regional softness has been the primary source of the recent drag on the overall domain name base growth. We're also seeing some softness from our U.S.-based registrars, primarily due to their increased focus on ARPU, through higher retail pricing levels, which is impacting new registrations and renewal rates. While we had expected these same factors to gradually subside in 2024, based on our first quarter results and current channel feedback, we now expect these conditions to persist through most of 2024. That being said, we're in a process of rolling out new registrar marketing programs to support and improve registration trends for the second half of this year to achieve our goal of returning the domain name base to growth in 2025. We're now expecting a change in the domain name base to be between positive 0.25% to a negative 1.75% for the full year of 2024. As a modeling note, the decrease in domain name base is expected to be most pronounced during the second quarter of 2024 due to a seasonally larger expiring base of domains during the first half of the year. Our financial and liquidity position continues to remain stable with $925 million in cash cash equivalents, and marketable securities at the end of the quarter. During the first quarter, we repurchased 1.3 million shares for $260 million. At quarter end, $860 million remained available and authorized under the current share repurchase program. Now I'd like to turn the call over to George. I'll return when George has completed his financial report with closing remarks.