Gen Digital Inc. (NASDAQ:GEN) Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript October 30, 2024 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Jason Starr - Head of IR
Vincent Pilette - CEO
Natalie Derse - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Andrew Nowinski - Wells Fargo
Ryan Powderly - Barclays
Peter Levine - Evercore
Tomer Zilberman - Bank of America
Hamza Fodderwala - Morgan Stanley
Dan Bergstrom - RBC

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for standing by. My name is Victoria, and I will be your conference operator today. This call is being recorded and all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. At this time, for opening remarks, I would like to pass the call over to Jason Starr, Head of Investor Relations.

Jason Starr

Thank you, Victoria, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Gen's second quarter fiscal year 2025 earnings call. Joining me today are Vincent Pilette, CEO; and Natalie Derse, CFO.

As a reminder, there will be a replay of this call posted on the Investor Relations website, along with our slides and press release. I'd like to remind everyone that during this call, all references to the financial metrics are non-GAAP and all growth rates are year-over-year, unless otherwise stated. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in our press release and earnings presentation, both of which are available on our IR website at investor.gendigital.com. We encourage investors to monitor this website as we routinely post investor oriented information such as news and events, and financial filings.

Today's call contains statements regarding our business, financial performance and operations, including the impact of our business and industry that may be considered forward-looking statements, and such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Those statements are based on current beliefs, assumptions and expectations as of today's date, October 30, 2024. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. For more information, please refer to the cautionary statement in our press release and the risk factors in our filings with the SEC and in particular, our most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q.

And now, I'll turn the call over to Vincent.

Vincent Pilette

Thank you, Jason. Q2 was another solid quarter of consistently executing on our strategy, meeting our commitments for profitable growth, while continuing our investment to meet the long-term consumer needs of ever expanding digital lives. We delivered another quarter of mid-single-digit bookings growth, up 5%, our highest growth rate since the Avast acquisition and a double-digit earnings per share growth, up 16%. We also grew our direct paying customers by 400,000 in the quarter, now at a record 39.7 million. Those results are a testament to the solid disciplined and consistent execution of our team. On top of that, it is also a clear reflection of what we have talked about for many quarters. People are being exposed to an accelerating threat environment and their awareness is growing with every new breach and scam, text or email. Those trends are here to stay and are being enhanced by the use or misuse of AI.