VeriSign - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 delivered steady growth with revenue of $409.9M (+5.9% YoY) and diluted EPS of $2.21 (+9.9% YoY); operating margin remained ~68.5% while net margin was ~50.6%. Against S&P Global consensus, EPS was a small beat (+$0.03), revenue was roughly in line/slight miss (~-$1.1M), and EBITDA missed more meaningfully versus consensus (details below; S&P Global).*
• Management raised full-year 2025 guidance: revenue to $1.645–$1.655B (from $1.635–$1.650B), operating income to $1.117–$1.127B (from $1.110–$1.125B), and lowered capex to $25–$35M (from $30–$40M); tax rate and OI&E unchanged.
• Key operating KPIs improved: 10.4M new .com/.net registrations (+1.2M YoY), domain base rose by 0.66M QoQ to 170.5M, and renewal rate for the prior quarter finalized at 75.5% vs 74.1% a year ago; strength was broad-based with notable APAC momentum.
• Capital returns broadened: dividend of $0.77 per share declared and buyback authorization increased by $913M to $1.5B; Q2 repurchases were 0.6M shares for $163M. A DNIB industry report showed 371.7M global domain registrations at Q2-end (+0.9% QoQ, +2.6% YoY), adding support for industry demand.
• Potential stock catalysts: raised 2025 guidance, improving domain trends and APAC strength, newly initiated dividend with commitment to continue, and $1.5B buyback capacity; near-term technical overhang from a post-quarter Berkshire Hathaway secondary offering reducing its stake below 10% (non-dilutive).

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Broad-based demand recovery with APAC leading: “Each of our geographic regions has shown improvement… with particular new registrations strength from Asia-Pacific”. New .com/.net registrations rose to 10.4M (vs 9.2M YoY), and the domain base increased by 0.66M QoQ to 170.5M.
• Improved retention: renewal rate for Q1 2025 finalized at 75.5% vs 74.1% in the prior-year period; management highlighted registrar refocus on customer acquisition and engagement with Verisign’s marketing programs as tailwinds.
• Shareholder returns diversified and enhanced: cash dividend of $0.77 per share declared, and buyback authorization lifted to $1.5B; 0.6M shares repurchased for $163M in Q2.

What Went Wrong

• EBITDA underperformed consensus despite solid GAAP metrics, implying higher costs or mix vs expectations (see Estimates Context; S&P Global).*
• Domain base still down slightly YoY (-0.1%) at 170.5M despite sequential improvement, underscoring gradual recovery trajectory.
• Structural balance sheet optics: continued stockholders’ deficit (-$1.99B) and higher long-term senior notes ($1.79B), though cash and marketable securities were $594M (down $6M from YE 2024).

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Today, everyone, welcome to VeriSign's second 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 second quarter 2025 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 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'd like to turn the call over to Jim.

Thank you, David. Good afternoon to everyone, and thank you for joining us. Last week, VeriSign marked 28 years of 100% availability of the .com and .net domain name resolution system, an unparalleled record of reliability, delivering on our mission of providing stability and security of the critical internet infrastructure we operate. Turning to our results, VeriSign's performance in the second quarter reflects sequentially improving trends and the soundness of our business model. At the end of June, the domain name base for .com and .net totaled 170.5 million domain names, up 660,000 from last quarter. New registrations for the second quarter totaled 10.4 million, compared with 10.1 million for last quarter and 9.2 million for the same quarter a year ago. The renewal rate for the second quarter of 2025 is expected to be 75.5% compared to 72.7% a year ago.

Given these improving domain name base trends, we now expect the change in the domain name base to be between positive 1.2% and positive 2% for 2025. The improving trends, which began at the end of last year, have continued throughout the first half of 2025. Each of our geographic regions has shown improvement year-over-year in both new registrations and renewal rates, with particular new registrations strength from Asia-Pacific. We are seeing registrars focus more on customer acquisition, and many of them are engaging more fully with our marketing programs. Our updated guidance reflects this positive momentum but continues to reflect some conservatism as economic and geopolitical uncertainty exists and as we monitor the continuing strength of the trends noted. Our financial and liquidity position remains stable with $594 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities at the end of the quarter.

During the second quarter, we returned $235 million to stockholders, of which $72 million was through dividend payments and $163 million through repurchase of 0.6 million shares. Effective today, the Board of Directors has increased the amount authorized for share repurchases of VeriSign common stock by $913 million for a total of $1.5 billion available 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 August 19th, 2025, payable on August 27th, 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's completed his financial report with closing remarks.

John Calys (EVP and CFO)

Thank you, Jim, and good afternoon, everyone. For the quarter ended June 30, 2025, the company generated $410 million of revenue, up 5.9% from the same quarter a year ago. Operating expense in Q2 2025 totaled $129 million, which compares to $131 million last quarter and $121 million for the second quarter of last year. Net income for the second quarter totaled $207 million, compared to $199 million both last quarter and a year ago, same quarter. Second quarter diluted earnings per share was $2.21 compared to $2.10 last quarter and $2.01 for the same quarter of 2024. Operating cash flow for the second quarter of 2025 was $202 million. Free cash flow was $195 million compared with $160 million and $151 million, respectively, in the year ago quarter. I will now discuss our updated full-year guidance for 2025.

Revenue is now expected to be between $1.645 billion and $1.655 billion. Operating income is now expected to be between $1.117 billion and $1.127 billion. 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 now expected to be between $25 million and $35 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 will turn the call back to Jim for his closing remarks.

Jim Bidzos (Executive Chairman, President, and CEO)

Thank you, John. We're pleased to see the improving channel trends we're reporting today, which are the registrar refocus on customer acquisition and their engagement with our programs. We're also pleased to see that these trends are broad-based across all regions globally, particularly in Asia-Pacific. Our 2025 programs have deepened our engagement with our channel, and we're using what we're learning to improve our 2026 programs, which are currently under development. I think it's important to remember that offering marketing programs to our registrar channel isn't new for the company. What's new is that as our channel is diversifying with many different business models represented, we're specifically adapting our programs for broader engagement. Today, the focus of our reporting is, of course, Q2 earnings. However, our announcement of a dividend last April has drawn the interest of many investors new to VeriSign.

For any of those who may be on today's call, I'd like to take the opportunity for a minute or two to offer some perspective beyond the financial results. VeriSign's primary mission is to operate critical global infrastructure, not only .com, but also including essential components of internet navigation itself, such as operating root servers and publishing the root zone within stringent availability and performance requirements. The endpoint mission is, in a challenging cyber threat environment, to answer DNS queries with 100% availability, accuracy, and millisecond-level performance around the world 24/7. There are now over 460 billion such queries on average per day, or well over 5 million queries per second, every second of every day.

By developing a unique, highly resilient architecture with physical points of presence in over 60 countries, avoiding reliance on any public cloud service where outages are not uncommon, and designing overcapacity measured in multiple orders of magnitude over current and anticipated traffic volumes, VeriSign has delivered this performance for 28 continuous years without failure, an unparalleled record. Reliance on this mostly invisible infrastructure has grown as internet usage and reliance has grown, and the broad dependencies on this infrastructure by other critical infrastructures cannot be overstated. Two contracts, the cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the .com registry agreement with ICANN, underlie VeriSign's operation of .com. Both have seen multiple renewals, and most recently, both were renewed in November 2024 for another six years. Thanks for your attention today. This concludes our prepared remarks. Now, we'll open the call for your questions.

Operator, we're ready for the first question.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. 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 Rob Oliver with Baird.

Rob Oliver (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Good afternoon. Jim, nice to speak with you. John, official welcome to you. First question for you guys is just around the obvious domain strength, which you guys are seeing, which is very encouraging. Jim, I would love to get your perspective on kind of what some of the drivers are for the domain strength. I know you called out broad-based drivers in terms of geography, but if there's anything to call out there. You did mention the marketing programs, and I appreciate that color. I'd also love to hear a little bit on where you're seeing traction with those marketing programs. I had a quick follow-up. Thank you.

Jim Bidzos (Executive Chairman, President, and CEO)

Okay. First of all, the things that we mentioned earlier are the main drivers. Number one is a refocus on new customer acquisition by registrars versus the ARPU that we saw for a period of time. That cyclical turn is a tailwind that we were anticipating and hoping. We did not know exactly when it would come, but that is certainly here. Registrar engagement with our marketing programs seems to be accelerating the improving trends in demand for our domain names. We will continue to refine and improve the programs as we learn and monitor their performance and apply what we learn and hopefully improve their effectiveness. I know this is on a lot of folks' minds, so I will just say as a reminder, the cost of our marketing programs is baked into all of the updated guidance that we provided today, and all of these programs are accretive.

I would just call out as well the improvement in the preliminary renewal rate of 75.5%, up from last year's Q2 rate of 72.7%. I think that is significant. The midpoint of the domain name base guidance that we gave today reflects what we expect to be a continuation of the trends. We think it is prudent not to ignore the variables here, so there is a little bit of caution baked in there as well. We will certainly update you next quarter. I would say to sum it up, we are pretty pleased with the improvements that we are seeing. We are going to keep doing what we are doing with the programs, improve them, help accelerate the trends that we are seeing now across all the regions.

Rob Oliver (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. And then just a quick follow-up. You called out Asia-Pacific in particular, Jim, as a driver. I guess two parts to that question. One, is that also a combination of just better economy and marketing programs getting better for you guys, or is it one or the other? Two, have you seen any movement one way or another in China relative to domain activity? Thank you guys very much.

Jim Bidzos (Executive Chairman, President, and CEO)

Sure. Thanks, John.

John Calys (EVP and CFO)

Yes. Hey, Rob. It's John. Certainly, we've seen year-over-year growth in new registration across all of our main regions. Asia-Pacific was the strongest of those three regions. China is now reported as a part of our Asia-Pacific regions. Registrars in that region are seeing solid demand. We think some of that demand is being accelerated by our marketing programs. Over the years, as you know, we have seen volatility out of China. While we're pleased right now with the improvement and the trend that we see, we continue to monitor the strength and the duration of the positive trends. As Jim mentioned, we've baked a little bit of conservatism into our forecast for the rest of the year.

Rob Oliver (Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah, that's helpful color, John. Thank you guys both very much. I appreciate it.

John Calys (EVP and CFO)

Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will take our last question from Igala Runian with Citi group.

Hey, good afternoon, guys. Maybe first, a clarification. It sounds like you're talking about the marketing programs and the kind of registrars moving back towards broadening the funnel versus on ARPU as separate things. Do you see the marketing program driving the way the registrars are changing on that ARPU versus funnel approach, or are both things kind of happening concurrently at the same time but separately?

Jim Bidzos (Executive Chairman, President, and CEO)

I think it's kind of the latter there that you're describing. There is, clearly, I mentioned last quarter that early in the year, two registrars advertised in a Super Bowl. That's a bit of an extreme example, but there's much activity similar to that that we see that they're focusing on trying to find new customers. Our programs, we think, are contributing and accelerating, and so there's a bit of synergy there between the two. The other component here is that the diverse channel that we mentioned. They all have different business models, and by offering them a range of programs that allow all of them to engage, I think that's very welcome. We get a lot of feedback. We visit all of our channel partners. We speak to them frequently.

I would say not only are we learning, but the feedback that we're getting also is very much informing what we'll do with the programs that we're putting together right now for 2026.

Okay. Very helpful. Maybe a follow-up on the 2026 programs as well. The programs helping you get, or at least kind of envision, the 2% growth at the high end for this year. If I look back historically, there's always been a range in where kind of the domain name base grows, but certainly an opportunity to get back above 2%. I know I'm not going to ask you to forecast for 2026, but if the marketing programs are working and you can kind of continue to tweak them, maybe you see a path towards greater than that moving forward beyond this year. Just any more color you can give on the marketing programs next year and where you think that can take things?

It is a bit early for that, but I can tell you with confidence that what we're learning is giving us cause for reason to believe that we think we can improve them. It is too early to talk about how much, of course, but I think there is no doubt that we're getting better, that we're getting much, much more information, that our channel engagement is broad and improved. Our teams are meeting more frequently. We're getting more specific suggestions, ideas, and requests about how we can help the channel perform better. All of that activity certainly would be indicative of continued improvement. We'll keep you posted.

We'll talk to you again in another quarter, and maybe we'll have more, but I see it now as an opportunity to take everything that we're learning, which is significant, and apply it to designing more effective programs and perhaps even get broader engagement by the channel. Remember, we have a very large number of registrars. It is a bit early to talk too much about 2026, but we're pleased with what we're seeing and hearing. John, do you want to add anything?

John Calys (EVP and CFO)

No. Obviously, in our planning process, we're looking at how we can refine and adjust the programs. I think it's more of an evolution than a revolution as we look forward.

In the right direction.

Jim Bidzos (Executive Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah.

Okay. And sorry, two more, if you don't mind. One maybe quick and then a philosophical one, bigger picture over time. Any update on the new domain auctions that are coming up later this year and your thoughts on, I know we're still working through .web potentially, but just broadening beyond .com, .net, and maybe .web. The bigger picture, longer-term one, I mean, genAI and trends and the impact to the open internet is a topic that comes up these days in almost every conversation with investors. In particular, the impact to the kind of mid and long tail of the internet over time. Just wanted to get your thoughts on how you see that impact playing out over time and your thoughts on how traffic to the open internet might change and how that might change the trajectory or importance of domain growth and websites.

Given where you sit, love to get your thoughts on that. Thanks.

All right. Oh, thanks. Three or four good essay questions in there. I will try to answer all of them, but try to be a little bit brief. No, those are good questions. First of all, I think you were referring to the new gTLD program that ICANN is planning to launch next year. The target availability of the window of new applications to open is in Q2 of next year. We are looking at that. We have been involved in aspects of the program. You mentioned auctions. I think ICANN, pretty sure that this is sort of decided at this point, that there is a lot of indication that there will not be auctions, that there will be some other mechanism that would resolve what are called contention sets when multiple applicants for the same TLD apply.

We are looking at that for any opportunities for anything that we might apply for. Too early to really talk about anything there. You also mentioned .web. There is some update there. What we have had here just recently since the previous update, the IRP panel, which is essentially the arbitration panel, as you recall, we made a request again to participate in the IRP, which was granted. We will be participating. Briefs have been submitted. Altenovo, the plaintiff, so to speak, in this case, made their brief in June. Our response and ICANN's responses are due in August, in a very few days here. The final hearing is currently scheduled for mid-November 2025. Maybe we are getting close to the end here. Just to reiterate, we intend to become the registry operator for .web. We intend to bring this TLD to our customers as soon as we can.

We believe Altenovo's use of ICANN's processes to keep this from happening is an abusive process and is being pursued in bad faith to keep .web off the market. With respect to AI, this is really interesting. We, like I am sure you are, get a lot of questions, a lot of interest. It is really the focus for everybody. We do not see it as a negative. I think there are at least two areas where AI can be positive for domain names. First, AI models scrape their data from websites, and we think the AI optimization will become more important for creating websites with more content. I would like to think that there is no static data in the world today.

Even if an AI had an LLM that consisted of everything in the Encyclopedia Britannica, even the War of 1812 is getting a new look, a new analysis, and new information. There is nothing static. Information needs to be obtained, and the internet needs to be navigated, and that is where our infrastructure comes into play. AI tools can also be powerful for domain name suggestions, really powerful. We have learned over the years that multiple keyword comms are good domain names to have. We're using this, building it into our name suggestion tools. Now, as it relates to our own use of AI internal in our infrastructure, as I think you may not be surprised to hear, we are taking a very cautious, a very low-risk approach. We're moving very carefully and thoughtfully before we fully implement any AI tools for our own business.

It's all about security and stability and avoiding the unknown and avoiding single points of failure. We are drawing very, very careful fences around our use of AI and being extremely cautious about it. Anyway, there's a lot there. I don't know if that answered your questions, but.

It does. Very interesting and very helpful. Thank you.

John Calys (EVP and CFO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This does conclude today's question and answer session. I would now like to 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 conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.