VeriSign, Inc.

Good day, everyone. Welcome to VeriSign's third quarter 2024 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 third 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 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. Just an apology here before I start that I may sneeze somewhere along the way, a little bit of allergy effect today. We delivered another quarter of operational and financial stability by focusing on our mission as a critical internet infrastructure operator. Also, we extended our unparalleled 27 years of 100% uninterrupted availability for the CommonNet domain name resolution system. For the third quarter, revenues grew 3.8% year-over-year, operating income grew 5.9% year-over-year, and earnings per share grew 13.1% year-over-year. At the end of September, the domain name base in .com and .net totaled 169.6 million domain names. During the third quarter, the domain name base decreased by 1.1 million names. From a new registration perspective, The third quarter ended with 9.3 million new registrations compared with 9.9 million names for the same quarter last year. The renewal rate for the third quarter of 2024 is expected to be approximately 72.3% compared to 73.5% a year ago. As we have previously reported, we continue to see U.S. registrars prioritize ARPU over customer acquisition. through higher retail pricing levels, increased focus on aftermarket sales, and reduced spend on marketing to new customers compared with prior years. In addition, and as expected, China-related weakness continues. These factors are impacting new registrations and renewal rates in 2024. During the third quarter, the U.S. region was lower by approximately 850,000 names. China-related weakness contributed to most of the remaining sequential decline in the third quarter. The domain name base from our EMEA region was up nearly 200,000 names during the third quarter. As we've noted in our prior earnings calls, we have been developing and piloting new registrar marketing programs with our channel to support our goal of returning to domain name base growth. While we have seen good response to our new programs, it does take time for registrars to adopt and integrate them into their sell cycle. As a result, many are looking towards 2025 to engage more fully. Accordingly, and with current trends persisting, returning the entire DNB to growth in the second half of 2025 may be more challenging. With that being said, we're doing what we can to help refocus the registrars towards higher renewal rate cohorts with our new programs, and we will provide full-year guidance for 2025 during our February earnings call. With the current trends tracking in line with our forecast from last quarter, we are narrowing our expectations for the change in the domain name base to be between negative 2.9% and negative 2.3% for full year 2024, decreasing the midpoint by 10 basis points. Moving now to the company's contracts, on September 26th, ICANN posted the revised .com registry agreement for public comment. The comment period runs through November 5th. The current .com registry agreement expires November 30th, and we expect the renewal process to be completed by that date. Also, as we previously disclosed, we have agreed to discussions with the NTIA regarding dot-com pricing and the health of the dot-com ecosystem. Dot-com ecosystem includes the retail and secondary markets as part of possible mutually agreed solutions that serve the public interest and benefit end users, especially businesses and consumers. These discussions are separate from the com registry agreement renewal process with ICANN. We're engaged with the NTIA now in these discussions, but we have no further update at this time. Our financial and liquidity position continues to remain stable with $645 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities at the end of the quarter. During the third quarter, we repurchased 1.7 million shares for $301 million. At quarter end, $1.28 billion remained available and authorized under the current share repurchase program. And now I'd like to turn the call over to George. I'll return when George has completed his report with closing remarks. George.