VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) Q1 2024 Results Conference Call April 25, 2024 4:30 PM ET

Company Participants

David Atchley - VP of IR and Corporate Treasurer
Jim Bidzos - Executive Chairman, President and CEO
George Kilguss - EVP and CFO

Conference Call Participants

Rob Oliver - Baird
Ygal Arounian - Citi

Operator

Good day, everyone. Welcome to VeriSign's First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. Today's conference is being recorded. Recording of this call is not permitted unless pre-authorized. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. David Atchley, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Treasurer. Please go ahead, sir.

David Atchley

Thank you, operator. Welcome to VeriSign's first quarter 2024 earnings call. Joining me are Jim Bidzos, Executive Chairman, President and CEO; and George Kilguss, Executive Vice President and CFO. This call and presentation are being webcast from the Investor Relations Web site, 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. 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 Web site 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.

Jim Bidzos

Thank you, David. Good afternoon, to everyone and thank you for joining us. In addition to continuing to deliver on our mission as a critical Internet infrastructure provider, we delivered solid and consistent financial results during the first quarter. These results show the continued financial strength of our business model. For the first quarter, revenues grew 5.5% year-over-year, operating income grew 7.3% year-over-year and earnings per share grew 12.9% year-over-year. At the end of March, the domain name base in .com and .net totaled 172.5 million domain names, down 270,000 names from year end 2023. From a new registration perspective, the first quarter ended with 9.5 million new registrations compared with 10.3 million names for the same quarter last year. The renewal rate for the first quarter of 2024 is expected to be approximately 74% compared to 75.5% a year ago. As we discussed last quarter, we expect our domains under management from our China based registrars to contract in 2024. In the first quarter, this segment declined by 360,000 names. For the reasons noted in prior quarters, this regional softness has been the primary source of the recent drag on the overall domain name base growth.