VeriSign, Inc. Q1 2010 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us for VeriSign’s first quarter 2010 earnings conference call. I’m Nancy Fazioli, Director of Investor Relations and I’m here today with Mark McLaughlin, President and CEO, and Brian Robins, Executive Vice President and CFO.

Please note that this call and accompanying slide presentation are being webcast from our Investor Relations website located at investor.verisign.com. Please refer to our website for important information including the Q1 2010 earnings press release. A replay of this call will be available on our website within a few hours. Today’s slide presentation will also be available for download after the call.

Financial results in today’s press release are un-audited and the matters we will be discussing today include forward-looking statements and as such 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 Forms 10-K and 10-Q and any applicable amendments which identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements.

I would like to remind you that in light of Regulation FD, VeriSign retains its longstanding policy to not comment on financial guidance during the quarter unless it is done through a public disclosure.

The financial results in today’s press release and the matters we will be discussing today include non-GAAP measures used by VeriSign. GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation information is appended to our press release and slide presentation, both of which can be found on our Investor Relations website. Please note that we have included a table in the statement of operations in the press release with the classification of stock based compensation

In a moment, Mark and Brian will provide some prepared remarks and afterward we will open up the call for your questions. Unauthorized recording of this conference call is not permitted.

With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Mark.

Mark McLaughlin

Thanks, Nancy. Good afternoon everyone. Q1 was a good quarter for us and a good way to start off the year. In both naming and authentication services, we are seeing improvements in the business driven by the rebounding economy as well as programs and efforts we have implemented to improve the businesses. As we have indicated in the past, we believe that online advertising spend and e-commerce spend are correlated to our business results on a lagging basis.

Both of these areas saw healthy sequential improvement in the first quarter. On the naming side of the business in the first quarter, this helped us to achieve record new registrations as well as an improving renewal rate, and on the authentication side of the business, we saw continued strength in bookings.