VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jim Bidzos : Well, let’s see. I think there’s a couple of questions in there. But I guess, first of all, we — to answer directly part of your question, we have not tried to assess and factor in the impact of layoffs the new business starts might have, although that is a data point that we do track. I think you can map new business starts going back to 2020 with a fairly good sized jump then. And some elevated activity in 2021, and then you see it declining in 2022. So that does tend to correlate a bit to the domain name activity and registration activity that we saw what. That’s going to mean for the future? I’m not sure it’s not a planned part of our guidance for 2023. I will just say, and I’ll invite George to comment as well.

But we think that the fundamentals of our business and the long-term prospects for the business are fundamentally strong. Domain names are established, have tremendous utility and tremendous value and registrations. We think long-term, it’s a great business to be in. We think it will return to pre-pandemic levels. But 2023 is a tricky year to predict. So we haven’t gone as far as predicting a return at that point. So I do think, one of the overriding sort of macro factors and all of this is just a complicated longer recovery from COVID than people thought. I think it’s pretty clear that we’re seeing that some of the ups and downs and the bumps that we’re encountering. George, do you want to add anything to that?

George Kilguss : The only thing I’d add, Ygal, is that when you look at our business and what we’ve previously indicated, we look at factors such as Internet adoption, Internet penetration and the growth of e-commerce influencing our business. And I think if you look back during 2020 and 2021, clearly, we saw a lot of those statistics increase significantly. And while they’ve come down, there’s still, I think, a longer growing trend that I think bodes well for domain names.

Jim Bidzos : Yes. And I would just add one statistic, one trend is that even the names that we registered in 2020 and 2021 exclusive of some of the China names that are now renewing for the second time or even the third time, are renewing at the traditional previously renewed rate, which is in the mid-80s. So I think that’s a good indicator about the long-term strength of the business.

Ygal Arounian: Great. That’s helpful, and I agree on the trends on e-commerce and all that. Last question. The operating margins, if I’m looking at it correctly, since have come in quite better than where the guidance applied for 4Q. Can you just talk about what is driving that and how that fits into the expense control that we’re talking about? Or is it a separate thing?

George Kilguss : Yes. Thanks, Ygal. I think a couple of things. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we did during the year, it was actually late in the fourth quarter, transition out of .tv management at TLD and in doing so, we — as we completed all our obligations there, we did recognize about $8.4 million of deferred revenue in the fourth quarter. Again, total revenue for that contract in 2021 was about $19 million. But as Jim mentioned, we — in the beginning, I would say, in the second quarter, we started looking pretty closely at our expenses and did more responsible management of those expenses, and we were able to get those expenses down. Overall, our expenses grew by about 4.6% this year which is similar to last year. As far as the fourth quarter, we did do a little bit of seasonal marketing more than we had done in the third quarter, in the fourth quarter. And so, some of the increase there sequentially was a result of some of those marketing activities.