VeriSign, Inc.

Good day, everyone. Welcome to VeriSign's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. Recording of this call is not permitted unless preauthorized. 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 fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. Joining me are Jim Bidzos, Executive Chairman, President and CEO, and John Callis, 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 reports on Form 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. Jim and John 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. 2025 marked another solid year for VeriSign as we continue to deliver on our mission by extending our record of 100% service delivery for the dot-com and net DNS to an unparalleled 28 years, even as utilization of our services increased significantly. New registrations during 2025 totaled 41.7 million names, the largest we have seen since 2021. During the year, the domain name base grew by 4.5 million names, or 2.6%, leading to a 2025 ending .com.net domain name base of 173.5 million names. Our revenue grew 6.4% year over year, while EPS grew by 10.1%. In 2025, we returned $1.1 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and quarterly dividends, which were initiated in the second quarter of 2025. The positive domain name based trends we saw developing in late 2024 gained strength and continued throughout 2025. During the year, we saw sustained strength and new registrations, renewal rates, and domain name based growth across our three main regions, the US, EMEA, and APAC. It is clear to us that end users are seeing value in domain names and the domain name system as evidenced by our strong domain name metrics and the increasing utilization of our infrastructure. Net registrations added during the fourth quarter were 1.58 million names driven by the strength of new registrations of 10.7 million, which is up from 9.5 million in Q4 of 2024, and a preliminary Q4 renewal rate of 75% compared to 74% a year ago. We continue to see solid demand for our domain names during the fourth quarter and ongoing registrar engagement with our programs. As we look to 2026, we're encouraged by the continued strength as we exited 2025 and register our feedback on our 2026 marketing efforts. For 2026, we expect a domain name base growth rate of between 1.5% and 3.5%. As a reminder, you can monitor the progression of the domain name base, which is updated daily on our website. Our financial and liquidity position remained stable, with $581 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities at the end of the quarter. There was $1.08 billion remaining available at the end of the quarter under the current share repurchase program, which has no expiration. As announced in today's earnings release, VeriSign's Board of Directors declared a cash dividend of $0.81 per share of VeriSign's outstanding common stock to stockholders of record, as of the close of business on February 19, 2026, payable on February 27, 2026. This quarterly amount is an increase of 5.2%, which is consistent with the increase in net income we saw during 2025. VeriSign intends to continue to pay a cash dividend on a quarterly basis subject to market conditions and approval by VeriSign's Board of Directors. Now I'd like to turn the call over to John. I'll return when John has completed his financial report with closing remarks.