VeriSign - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Solid quarter with modest topline and EPS beats and an important capital allocation change: revenue $402.3M vs $401.8M consensus and diluted EPS $2.10 vs $2.09 consensus; EBITDA of ~$280.1M was below a ~$303.9M consensus, implying some margin pressure vs Street expectations (consensus values marked with asterisks are from S&P Global).
• Management raised FY25 revenue guidance to $1.635–$1.650B (from $1.615–$1.635B) and improved its 2025 domain name base (DNB) outlook to −0.7% to +0.9% (from −2.3% to −0.3%), citing better new registrations, improving renewal trends, and registrar re‑engagement with Verisign’s marketing programs.
• Initiated a quarterly dividend: $0.77 per share, with intent to grow over time alongside earnings; buybacks continued ($230M repurchased in Q1).
• Key near-term stock catalysts: dividend initiation and improved 2025 DNB trajectory; watch execution of marketing/channel programs and the .web arbitration timeline commentary for optionality.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Revenue and EPS beat, guidance raised: Q1 revenue $402.3M (up 4.7% Y/Y) and EPS $2.10; FY25 revenue guide lifted to $1.635–$1.650B on improved DNB trends.
• Channel momentum: management cited registrar shift back to customer acquisition and early traction from flexible marketing programs; new registrations improved to 10.1M vs 9.5M last year and last quarter.
• Capital returns diversified: initiated a $0.77 quarterly dividend with intent to grow with earnings; continued buybacks ($230M; $793M authorization remaining).

Management quote: “We intend to grow the dividend annually with our earnings growth… a natural evolutionary step to diversify our return of cash to shareholders.” — Jim Bidzos.

What Went Wrong

• EBITDA missed Street: EBITDA ~$280.1M vs ~$303.9M consensus, implying a margin shortfall vs expectations even as GAAP operating margin remained strong (consensus values from S&P Global).
• DNB still recovering from 2024 softness: domain base down 1.5% Y/Y despite Q1 net adds of ~0.78M; management remains cautious given macro uncertainty.
• Expense drift: operating expenses up Y/Y on headcount and incentive comp; management implies similar spend run-rate for the balance of 2025, though operating margin should slightly improve at the guidance midpoint.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Day everyone. Welcome to Verisign's first quarter 2025 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.

David Atchley (VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Treasurer)

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to Verisign's first quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining me are Jim Bidzos, Executive Chairman, President, and CEO; George Kilguss, Executive Vice President and CFO; and John Calys, Senior Vice President, Global Controller, and Chief Accounting Officer, who will become Chief Financial Officer at the end of May upon George's retirement. 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 and 10-Q. Verisign does not update financial information 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'd like to turn the call over to Jim.

Jim Bidzos (Executive Chairman, President, and CEO)

Thank you, David. Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for joining us. This month, Verisign celebrated 30 years since its incorporation. It was incubated beginning in 1986 by RSA Data Security, where I was CEO. Verisign has changed significantly over the years, and we're particularly proud of Verisign's mission and role in providing critical internet information services. Turning to the first quarter results, Verisign's performance in the first quarter reflects sequentially improving trends and the soundness of our business model. At the end of March, the domain name base for .com and .net totaled 169.8 million domain names, up 777,000 from year-end of 2024. New registrations for the first quarter totaled 10.1 million, compared with 9.5 million for both last quarter and the same quarter last year. The renewal rate for the first quarter of 2025 is expected to be 75.3%, compared to 74.1% a year ago.

From a geographic perspective, during the first quarter, we saw trends improve with increases in the domain name base from our three main regions: the U.S., EMEA, and Asia-Pacific. Given these improving domain name base trends, we now expect the change in the domain name base to be between negative 0.7% or negative 70 basis points and positive 0.9% or 90 basis points for 2025. As mentioned last quarter, we saw improving trends at the end of 2024, which continued during the first quarter, resulting in both improved new registrations and renewal rates. It's still early, but we do see signs of registrar shifting towards customer acquisition, and we also see more registrar engagement with our marketing programs. Our updated guidance reflects these trends, but also includes a measure of caution until the macroeconomic situation clarifies.

As a reminder, any expenses associated with marketing programs are fully accounted for in our guidance. Our financial and liquidity position continues to remain stable, with $649 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities at the end of the quarter. During the first quarter, we repurchased 1 million shares, returning $230 million to shareholders. At quarter end, $793 million remained available and authorized 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 $0.77 per share of Verisign's outstanding common stock to stockholders of record as of the close of business on May 19, 2025, payable on May 28, 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.

We are pleased to introduce a cash dividend as part of our return of capital commitment to shareholders. We will continue our capital allocation focus first on maintaining adequate liquidity, second, investing in the business, and then returning excess cash to shareholders with a portion of that return now through quarterly cash dividends. This initiation of a cash dividend does not change the way we think about the total amount of shareholder return. In addition to an ongoing commitment to maintain a dividend, we intend to grow the dividend annually with our earnings growth. We view the decision to become a dividend issuer as a natural evolutionary step to diversify our return of cash to shareholders. I would like to turn the call over to George. I will return when George has completed his financial report with closing remarks.

George Kilguss (EVP and CFO)

Thanks, Jim. Good afternoon, everyone. For the quarter ended March 31st 2025, the company generated revenue of $402 million, up 4.7% from the same quarter a year ago. Operating expense in Q1 2025 totaled $131 million, which compares to $132 million last quarter and $125 million for the first quarter a year ago. While similar sequentially, the year-over-year increase in expense is mainly due to a slight increase in headcount and incentive-based compensation accrual adjustments. Net income in the first quarter totaled $199 million, compared to $191 million last quarter and $194 million a year ago, which produced diluted earnings per share of $2.10 for the first quarter this year, compared to $2 last quarter and $1.92 for the same quarter of 2024.

During the quarter, the company issued $500 million new 5.25% senior notes due 2032 to refinance the company's existing $500 million 5.25% 2025 senior notes, which matured on April 1. Operating cash flow for the first quarter of 2025 was $291 million, and free cash flow was $286 million, compared with the $257 million and $254 million, respectively, in the year-ago quarter. I'll now discuss our updated full year 2025 guidance. Revenue is now expected to be between $1,635 million and $1,650 million. Operating income is now expected to be between $1.110 billion and $1,125 million. Interest expense and non-operating income net, which includes interest income estimates, is still expected to be an expense of between $50 million and $60 million. Capital expenditures are still expected to be between $30 million and $40 million. The GAAP effective tax rate is still expected to be between 21% and 24%.

In summary, Verisign continued to demonstrate sound financial discipline during the quarter. Now I'll turn the call back to Jim for his closing remarks.

Jim Bidzos (Executive Chairman, President, and CEO)

Thank you, George. I'd like to acknowledge and thank George for his 13 years of service to Verisign as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. George has been instrumental in providing outstanding financial acumen and leadership to our operations and our teams, and we wish him the best in retirement. John Calys, Senior Vice President, Global Controller, and Chief Accounting Officer has served as Interim CFO in the past and has worked closely with George over many years and will become Chief Financial Officer upon George's retirement at the end of May, making for a seamless transition. Thanks for your attention today. This concludes our prepared remarks, and now we'll open the call for your questions. Operator, we're ready for the first question.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you are dialed in via the telephone and would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once your question has been stated, please mute your line. We will take our first question from Ygal Arounian with Citigroup.

Ygal Arounian (Director of Internet Equity Research)

Hey, good afternoon, guys. Thanks. I'll start with George. Congrats on the retirement, George. Good luck on the next steps. I guess you left investors with a little bit of a parting gift here on the dividend. Can you elaborate a little bit on the timing of why now is the right time to initiate a dividend? On the comment that doesn't change how you think about total shareholder return, does that mean that we should expect less buybacks because of the dividend? Maybe you could just put it in the context of that, and then I'll have some follow-ups.

Jim Bidzos (Executive Chairman, President, and CEO)

Hi, I'll let you, Jim, let me answer part of that question for you. Maybe I'll invite George to comment further. First of all, we're pleased to be able to diversify the method of shareholder return to now include regular dividends. I don't think there's much more to say than what I covered in my prepared remarks. The company's had a long track record of returning excess cash to shareholders and has been considering a quarterly cash dividend for quite some time. Today's announcement is consistent with that long track record and with our expectations of and confidence in the continued stability and strength of our business. George, did you want to add anything?

George Kilguss (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, Ygal, I think, you know, as Jim said, we're just diversifying our return of capital to shareholders, and we'll continue to go through our strategic framework of how we think about capital allocation as we've done in the past. I think you'll see us do a combination of the two. Clearly, it's really a statement on the company's stability and our business model, and we just think it's the right time to start diversifying that method of return of capital.

Ygal Arounian (Director of Internet Equity Research)

Okay, thanks. Two follow-ups on the business and the trends. With 1Q domain name base outperforming our expectations, you're taking up your outlook for the year because of that. Can you just talk about what you think were the biggest drivers of that performance relative to what you were expecting at the beginning of the year? As we kind of work our way through the rest of the year, particularly with some of the macro questions, you know, what are the factors that get you to the low end of the range versus the high end of the range over the course of the rest of the year? Second question on .net, we did not get the pricing increase in February like we have the past few years. Just any updated thoughts and how you're thinking about pricing there? Thank you.

George Kilguss (EVP and CFO)

Sure, Ygal, it's George. With regard to our guidance, you're right. You know, we're off to a solid start of the year delivering 770,000 net adds here in Q1. As a result, we took the guidance up, as Jim mentioned, from down 0.7% to positive 0.9%, which is a range of about 1.2 million names down to 1.5 million names up with a midpoint of about 200,000 there. You know, I think at the end of the day, what the guidance is really reflecting is the positive trends we're seeing here. As Jim mentioned, it also reflects a measure of caution as we're still early in the cycle and the macroeconomic outlook is a bit unclear.

We also have some seasonality to the domain name base in the first quarter, which is typically our strongest, but I think we're encouraged by the results and the activity of our registrars, and hence we took the guidance up pretty substantially here in Q1. As regards to your second question on .net price increases, I think you're aware that we really don't provide guidance with regard to pricing changes for our TLDs, but we do have to provide a six-month notice of any potential changes that we make. For .net, our last price increase became effective in February 2024, which placed our wholesale price for .net at $10.91. We, of course, regularly review our pricing strategies in conjunction with our go-to-market strategies for our TLDs, but as I mentioned, we don't provide pricing guidance for them as well.

Ygal Arounian (Director of Internet Equity Research)

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

We will take our last question from Rob Oliver with Baird.

Rob Oliver (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks, guys. Good afternoon. Appreciate it. I have a couple of questions. Jim or George, I'll start with you guys first. Just on some of the activities around your marketing channel programs that you guys sort of kicked off last year, would love to get an update on those, what sort of traction you're seeing with them. George, I know you just commented that you were encouraged by the registrar activity generally. I think, you know, part of that might be registrars re-engaging, but I would love to understand what portion of that is action you guys are taking and where you're seeing success with your marketing channel programs. I had a couple of follow-ups.

George Kilguss (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, sure, Rob. To answer your question with regard to marketing programs, as we mentioned over the past few quarters, we rolled out a variety of new programs late in 2024 and early 2025. To date, we've seen good registrar interest in those programs. While it's still early, we do attribute some of the improved new registration trends we saw in the fourth quarter and here again in the first quarter to our registrar engagement with the programs that we rolled out. I would call our activity that we saw here in the last two quarters activity from what I would call early adopters of the programs that we rolled out last year. We also have some registrars that are continuing to test the programs that we rolled out here in 2025.

We will continue to monitor and work with the registrar community here to help them engage in our programs throughout the year. I think, you know, early results were encouraged by them, but I think we still have some work to do.

Rob Oliver (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. That's helpful. Thanks. I appreciate it. Jim, on the strong domain guide, you know, I think you said that it includes a measure of caution relative to the macro, which I think were your words. You know, I'd love to hear your take on the macro because on the one hand, you know, it seems as if the registrars are starting to spend more, and we were super encouraged to see, you know, two leading registrars pony up for Super Bowl ads, which I think that was the first time in a handful of years that we've been tracking it that we saw that sort of a financial commitment, which was a positive. Obviously, there are some concerns on the macro right now. I would love to hear, you know, just from you kind of what your take currently is on the macro.

I guess it's a variance on Ygal's question earlier about how we might get on one or other end of that range.

Jim Bidzos (Executive Chairman, President, and CEO)

Sure. I'll give it a shot here. I think, first of all, the components of all those pieces are, first of all, you know, some things that we laid out last year that we would do and some things that we expected to shift favorably. There were a couple of tailwinds that we thought would shift to headwinds, and it looks like that's beginning to happen a bit, a return to new customer acquisition and a focus on ARPU by the channel. As you, you know, Super Bowl, for example, is clearly an indication of a spend on new customer acquisition. That's a favorable shift that we've seen since then. The things that we've done in our marketing programs that we've mentioned before, for example, we offered a range of programs simply as a way of providing needed flexibility in what was an evolving channel.

It had changed. Traditional registrars, yes, of course, there are customers, but also we had website builders, et cetera. One-size-fits-all approach did not work as well. I think that is where we are seeing some interesting, promising take-up, even though it is a bit early. I think the other thing that the component that we really cannot identify is just, you know, I am certainly not an economist, but I think I can, you know, recognize a bit of turmoil here, and I think it is just clarity. It is a question of clarity. As that clarifies, I think we will get a better idea of where the future is and offer any updated guidance, of course, as appropriate. This is just based on it being early in the year, a bit of uncertainty about where things will land. Hopefully, you know, they will shortly and we will be able to give you better info.

We are certainly appreciative of the positive changes that we've seen. As I said, we've done what we can control, and we're seeing some results from that, and they trend favorably. Also, we're picking up some headwinds that have shifted into tailwinds that are helping us return to getting off ARPU and returning to new customer acquisition by the registrars' programs that are working for them. Those are the different components. The uncertainty is obviously the macroeconomic environment, which we just need more clarity on before we can get more comfortable.

Got it. Okay, helpful. Yeah, you and everyone else. My two other quick ones. One, John, welcome. And, you know, George, congratulations on your retirement. I guess just a quick question about some of the higher expenses that George had called out. Is this a new run rate of higher expenses? I just would love to get a sense from you of kind of your philosophy relative to that expense run rate.

John Calys (SVP, Global Controller, and Chief Accounting Officer)

Hey, thanks, Rob. This is John. You know, if you look at the midpoint of our operating income guidance for the year, you know, it implies a slight improvement in our operating margin, but it also implies a slight amount of spend that we incurred, a similar amount of spend that we incurred in the first quarter for the balance of 2025. You know, as George mentioned in his prepared remarks, this is mainly due to slight increases in headcount and some of our incentive-based compensation programs. You know, as in past quarters, we'll continue to focus on discipline expense management and do that within our strategic framework.

Rob Oliver (Senior Research Analyst)

Great, thanks. Look forward to working with you. Last one for me is just any update from you guys on .web or anything we should be aware of there. Thanks very much.

Jim Bidzos (Executive Chairman, President, and CEO)

Thanks, Rob. Jim here. We do have a small update on .web. You know, just as in the first IRP, think arbitration IRP, this new IRP panel that we have has again rejected AltaNovo's attempt to invalidate certain procedural rules in the hopes that doing so would exclude our participation in these IRP proceedings. With that effort rejected, we anticipate a ruling soon on our application to participate in the IRP and the final hearing in November. To reiterate, Verisign, we intend to become the registry operator for .web, and we intend to bring this new TLD to our customers as soon as we can. We believe AltaNovo's use of ICANN's processes to stop this from happening is an abusive process and is being pursued in bad faith to keep .web off the market. That is the update this quarter.

Rob Oliver (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. All right. Great. I'll digest that, and then I'll come back to you guys probably on the call back or with some follow-up questions. Really appreciate your time. Thanks very much.

Jim Bidzos (Executive Chairman, President, and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes today's question and answer session. I will now turn the call back to David Atchley for final comments.

David Atchley (VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Treasurer)

Thank you, Operator. Please call the Investor Relations Department with any follow-up questions from this call. Thank you for your participation. This concludes our call. Have a good evening.

Operator (participant)

This does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.