VeriSign, Inc.

Good day, everyone. Welcome to VeriSign's third quarter 2026 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 third quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining me are Jim Bidzos, Executive Chairman, President and CEO, and John Calys, 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 plan to update financial performance or guidance during the quarter. The financial results in today's call and the matters we will be discussing today include GAAP results and free cash flow, a non-GAAP measure used by VeriSign. 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. We're pleased to report that VeriSign delivered strong results in the third quarter of 2026, both operationally and financially. The combined .com and .net domain name base now totals 182.5 million names, up 6.1% year over year, with a record 13.1 million new registrations processed during the third quarter. On a financial side, revenue is up 5.7% year over year, We have returned $1.14 billion to our shareholders in the last 12 months through share repurchases and dividends. As announced in today's earnings release, VeriSign's Board of Directors approved a cash dividend of $0.81 per share of VeriSign's outstanding common stock to shareholders of record as of the close of business on November 17, 2026, payable on November 24, 2026. VeriSign intends to continue to pay a cash dividend on a quarterly basis. At quarter end, 1.36 billion remained authorized for share repurchases. VeriSign's performance in the third quarter shows continued robust demand for domain names. During the quarter, the domain name base for .com and .net grew by 3.4 million from the prior quarter end. New registrations for the third quarter totaled 13.1 million. This compares with 12.7 million new registrations last quarter and 10.6 million for the third quarter of last year. The renewal rate for the third quarter of 2026 is expected to be 74.3% compared to 75.4% a year ago. The primary driver of this year-over-year decrease in renewal rates relates to the mix of first-time and previously renewed names with a higher percentage of first-time renewing names due to last year's strength in new registrations. As in recent quarters, the U.S. and EMEA were the regions in which we saw the strongest growth during the third quarter. The factors driving the solid domain name-based trends of the past several quarters further accelerated during the third quarter. Registrars have successfully engaged with our marketing programs and are focused on customer acquisition, plus AI tools are making content and website creation faster and easier. The ongoing strength in new registrations attest to the vital role that domain names play in discovering content and establishing digital credibility. With the trends we've observed in the first three quarters of 2026, and our expectations for the rest of the year, we're increasing and narrowing our guidance for domain name base growth to be between 6.5 and 7% for 2026. As a reminder, you can monitor the progression of the domain name base on our website, which is updated daily. As we stated last quarter, .web is delegated into the root zone and we're actively preparing for its launch. We have been communicating to our registrars that the required 30-day sunrise period is planned to begin in mid-December. In mid-January, we are planning to begin a limited registration period, or LRP, which could run into early April 2027. At that point, we expect to open .web for general availability. During the LRP, most registrants of a .com domain name will have an opportunity to register an exact match .web domain name. We're in the process of finalizing pricing and we'll be communicating our pricing plans to registrars over the next few weeks. As we shared last quarter, the .web registry agreement allows for pricing flexibility, including premium names, which we intend to use. The agreement also gives us more flexibility in marketing and engaging with our registrars than we have in .com and .net. We're looking forward to launching .web and adding it to our portfolio of trusted domain names alongside .com and .net. Now I'd like to turn the call over to John. I'll return when John has completed his financial report with closing remarks, including more information on VeriSign Informed, our high assurance validation service we announced earlier this month. John?