Operator: Good day, everyone. Welcome to Verisign's Q3 2026 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: Thank you, operator. Welcome to Verisign's Q3 2026 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.
David Atchley: 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 plan to update financial performance or guidance during the quarter.
David Atchley: The financial results in today's call and the matters we will be discussing today include GAAP results and free cash flow, a non-GAAP measure used by Verisign. 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 would like to turn the call over to Jim.
Jim Bidzos: Thank you, David. Good afternoon to everyone, and thank you for joining us. We are pleased to report that Verisign delivered strong results in Q3 2026, both operationally and financially. The combined .com and .net domain name base now totals 182.5 million names, up 6.1% year-over-year, with a record 13.1 million new registrations processed during Q3. On a financial side, revenue is up 5.7% year-over-year.
Jim Bidzos: We have returned $1.14 billion to our shareholders in the last 12 months through share repurchases and dividends. As announced in today's earnings release, Verisign's board of directors approved a cash dividend of $0.81 per share of Verisign's outstanding common stock to shareholders of record as of the close of business on 17 November 2026, payable on 24 November 2026. Verisign intends to continue to pay a cash dividend on a quarterly basis.
Jim Bidzos: At quarter end, $1.36 billion remained authorized for share repurchases. Verisign's performance in Q3 shows continued robust demand for domain names. During the quarter, the domain name base for .com and .net grew by 3.4 million from the prior quarter end. New registrations for Q3 totaled 13.1 million. This compares with 12.7 million new registrations last quarter and 10.6 million for Q3 of last year.
Jim Bidzos: The renewal rate for Q3 2026 is expected to be 74.3% compared to 75.4% a year ago. The primary driver of this year-over-year decrease in renewal rates relates to the mix of first-time and previously renewed names, with a higher percentage of first-time renewing names due to last year's strength in new registrations. As in recent quarters, the US and EMEA were the regions in which we saw the strongest growth during Q3.
Jim Bidzos: The factors driving the solid domain name base trends the past several quarters further accelerated during Q3. Registrars have successfully engaged with our marketing programs and are focused on customer acquisition. Plus, AI tools are making content and website creation faster and easier. The ongoing strength in new registrations attest to the vital role that domain names play in discovering content and establishing digital credibility.
Jim Bidzos: With the trends we've observed in the first three quarters of 2026 and our expectations for the rest of the year, we're increasing and narrowing our guidance for domain name base growth to be between 6.5% and 7% for 2026. As a reminder, you can monitor the progression of the domain name base on our website, which is updated daily. As we stated last quarter, .web is delegated into the root zone, and we're actively preparing for its launch.
Jim Bidzos: We have been communicating to our registrars that the required 30-day sunrise period is planned to begin in mid-December. In mid-January, we are planning to begin a limited registration period, or LRP, which could run into early April 2027. At that point, we expect to open .web for general availability. During the LRP, most registrants of a .com domain name will have an opportunity to register an exact match .web domain name.
Jim Bidzos: We're in the process of finalizing pricing and will be communicating our pricing plans to registrars over the next few weeks. As we shared last quarter, the .web registry agreement allows for pricing flexibility, including premium names, which we intend to use. The agreement also gives us more flexibility in marketing and engaging with our registrars than we have in .com and .net.
Jim Bidzos: We're looking forward to launching .web and adding it to our portfolio of trusted domain names alongside .com and .net. Now I'd like to turn the call over to John. I'll return when John has completed his financial report with closing remarks, including more information on Verisign Informed, our high assurance validation service we announced earlier this month. John?
John Calys: Thank you, Jim, and good morning or good afternoon, everybody. For the quarter ended 30 September 2026, the company generated revenue of $443 million, up 5.7% from the same quarter a year ago. Operating expense in Q3 2026 totaled $147 million, which compared to $138 million last quarter and $135 million for Q3 a year ago. During Q3 2026, the company recognized a pre-tax operating loss of $7.5 million related to certain assets held for sale, which accounted for the majority of the sequential increase in operating expenses.
John Calys: Operating income totaled $296 million, up $12 million or 4.2% from the previous year and flat sequentially. Net income for Q3 totaled $213 million, compared to $217 million last quarter and $213 million for the same quarter a year ago. This resulted in diluted earnings per share of $2.35 for Q3 this year, compared to $2.38 last quarter and $2.27 for Q3 last year.
John Calys: The previously mentioned loss to adjust the carrying value of certain assets held for sale decreased EPS by $0.06 in the current period. Operating cash flow for Q3 2026 was $268 million, and free cash flow was $261 million, compared with $308 million and $303 million, respectively, in the year-ago quarter. The year-over-year decrease is primarily related to higher cash taxes and payments to employees and vendors, partially offset by higher cash collected from customers in Q3 this year.
John Calys: Our financial and liquidity position remains stable, with $476 million in cash equivalents, and marketable securities at the end of the quarter. I will now discuss our updated full year 2026 guidance. Revenue is now expected to be between $1,755,000,000 and $1,760,000,000.
John Calys: Operating income is now expected to be between $1,188,000,000 and $1,192,000,000, which reflects the $7.5 million expense booked during Q3, as mentioned before. Interest expense and non-operating income net is still expected to be an expense between $59 million and $65 million. Capital expenditures are still expected to be between $55 million and $65 million. The GAAP effective tax rate is still expected to be between 22% and 25%. Now I'll turn the call back to Jim for his closing remarks.
Jim Bidzos: Thank you, John. We're pleased with the results of our core DNS business in Q3. We believe that our record of more than 29 years of uninterrupted .com/.net DNS global availability contributes to our domain growth by establishing and maintaining .com/.net as highly reliable and trusted TLDs, now processing approximately 800 billion DNS queries per day on average, returning cryptographically protected answers within milliseconds.
Jim Bidzos: With this unparalleled record of availability, reliability, and performance, we use the term high assurance to describe our services. Very soon, .web will join our family of trusted TLDs, and it will allow us to offer more choice to customers, and they will benefit from VeriSign's rigorous attention to availability and reliability. We're very pleased to be on track to bring .web to market in just a few months. As many of you know, we have recently announced another new product.
Jim Bidzos: On 5 October, we announced Verisign Informed, or VI, a security service to support the use of critically important and widely used digital credentials. There are many use cases for these credentials: authorized network access by users in corporate networks, secure email, secure software distribution, including app updates, and on billions of financial chip cards worldwide.
Jim Bidzos: Web certificates are used to establish a secure link when connecting to a website. Like any credential, there are many reasons certificates may need to be revoked before their expiration date. Gaps in that process will result in stale trust. At its core, VI answers the question: Has this certificate been revoked? It is easy to see how vital the answer to this question is in today's world.
Jim Bidzos: VI allows trust decisions to be made with the most current information at global scale and runs on our high assurance infrastructure, built with the same know-how and proprietary high-performance architecture that enables VeriSign's DNS to provide cryptographically protected responses in milliseconds to billions of DNS queries per day.
Jim Bidzos: Our microsite, verisigninformed.com, contains several blogs and tech reports introducing VI and offering descriptions and measurements in risk reduction that VI can provide. Three points I believe are of interest to investors. First, VI is fully operational in our infrastructure today. All financial data from 2024 up to and including our guidance through 2026 includes all VI expense. Second, pricing is being finalized now and should be completed by year-end, with production service delivery expected during H1 2027.
Jim Bidzos: Third, VI can be provisioned and operated like domains through our existing registrar channel, through existing PKI service providers and other application vendors, or even through a self-service facility. Provisioning and delivering the service are nearly identical to those of our core offerings. I will close by saying that we have always seen ourselves as a critical infrastructure service provider that prioritizes security, stability, and resiliency.
Jim Bidzos: That focus has delivered profitable growth for the company, and our focus will not change. We have established a record of disciplined capital allocation over many years that has delivered a compounding benefit through share repurchases, now diversified with a dividend. We achieved our goal of earning investment-grade status in 2021, and we intend to maintain it.
Jim Bidzos: We believe our new services, carefully selected for alignment with our risk tolerance and core competencies, represent a carefully measured way to continue to deliver for both our customers and shareholders. Thanks for your attention today. This concludes our prepared remarks. Now we will open the call for your questions. Operator, we are ready for the first question.
Operator: Thank you. If you are dialed in via the telephone and would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once your question has been stated, please mute your line. We will now take our first question from Rob Oliver with Baird.
Rob Oliver: Great. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. First one, Jim, it is a two-parter for you. The gross domain adds continue to be stunningly strong, up 24% year over year. You guys added another over 13 million this quarter. I was wondering if you could just touch on and remind us or update us on what you are seeing in terms of the drivers of that. I know clearly AI, but are you also seeing digital provenance or other things like that playing into that? The follow-up question I have is regarding trends you are seeing in first-year renewals.
Rob Oliver: You guys have been clear with us about the fact that that renewal rate would be impacted by this large bolus of new domains that you have. It sounds as if those first-year renewals have been coming in pretty strong. I wanted to understand what you are seeing in terms of those, the stickiness, the quality of those first-year renewal trends. Thank you.
Jim Bidzos: Well, let me address your first question first. Some of the drivers that we are seeing in new registrations, which is, as you pointed out, at 13.1 million during the quarter, is a record for us. Q2 was a record for us. Key drivers that we see are what I referred to before as a synergistic convergence of demand for domain names from businesses, new business starts, but also our marketing programs and an AI tailwind.
Jim Bidzos: We are hearing from some registrars that AI is a factor. AI clearly makes it easier to find a domain name, develop a website, and maintain a website. We are seeing that content creators want their content found by AI, and a domain name is one of the primary ways to have that content available.
Jim Bidzos: I think what we have been saying historically for a number of years, that the well-governed DNS is going to continue its value, the decades of investment in infrastructure like ours, governance by ICANN, strengthening and ensuring that a domain name is a unique, trusted, secure global identifier, I think is really demonstrating its value in a world where people still get online for the fundamental purpose of being found and conducting commerce. I think all that just really works together to drive that growth. I think your second question, John, I will let you address that about renewal rates.
John Calys: Good afternoon, Rob. Through Q3, what we have seen with our first-time renewal rates is they have remained fairly steady in the mid 40% range. The previously renewed rates have been the same. They have remained fairly steady in the mid 80% range.
John Calys: We have not seen a great deal of movement either direction in those. As Jim mentioned, with the strong new registrations, the mix of first-time renewing names is growing in proportion to the total base, and that does result just from math in the renewal rate going down. We are going to be watching very closely next year, because this year's registrations have been very strong, and we will be looking to see if there is any trends in the first-time renewal rates, but nothing of significance to report to you right now.
Rob Oliver: Great. Thanks, John. Jim, I just had one follow-up for you, and then I will cede the floor. I would love to get your take on just the timing of .web. It strikes me you guys might be in a unique position here relative to the timing of this pretty strong generic TLD, which is coming out ahead and, by a period of time of many of the new TLDs that will come out as part of the auction. I wanted to get a sense from you of, if that is right, if that early access to the market is a benefit to you guys, and any other way you can help us think about that timing or frame that opportunity. Thank you.
Jim Bidzos: Yes. Thanks, Rob. Well, certainly you made some factual statements about the timing. That is true. I think the strength of .web is what it has always been. It is a short, generic, relevant TLD operating in our infrastructure, our high assurance infrastructure. I am kind of looking beyond the short-term period. I do understand, and I do agree, there is an opportunity.
Jim Bidzos: There will be another round, but it is a ways down the road, and there is an opportunity here with .web. I think the strength of running on our reliable infrastructure with its track record, providing more choice to our customers with a short, relevant TLD is going to be a value proposition that will continue beyond this opportunity that we may have in the short term.
Jim Bidzos: I think the flexibility that we have in marketing. All of the things that come with a pure generic TLD that is not regulated the way .com and .net are, all those things play well. I think the enduring value of a domain name plays well. Certainly, the timing is good.
Jim Bidzos: We waited a long time. It would have been nice to have it sooner, but I think there is always room for a secure, reliable domain name that gives people more choice, and that is how we view it. We see .web as another member of the trusted family of .com and .net that has provided 29 years of 100% availability. I think that value is going to continue to be enduring the longer that record gets.
Rob Oliver: Great. Thank you both very much.
Jim Bidzos: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. We will take our next question from Ygal Arounian with Wedbush.
Ygal Arounian: Hey, good afternoon, guys. I want to maybe just follow up first on Rob's first question. You are going to be adding about 11 million domains this year. I mean, that is, I think, going back as high as it has been in decades, if I am not mistaken. I know it is being driven by multiple factors. But if I can get you to look forward a little bit, Jim, into next year, what gets this to slow down?
Ygal Arounian: It feels like AI trends and agentic in particular, as that starts to pick up, especially when you guys point to things like queries and the rate of change that you are seeing in query growth. It feels like this strength has a lot of runway, and just want to maybe get some of your thoughts as we look forward into next year, without getting guidance.
Jim Bidzos: Sure. I guess I would point to what we see as the very long trend lines here. First of all, there is just simply a growing. The economy is built on a digital platform that continues to grow. So there is constant new adoption of delivering services digitally. There is greater reliance on digital services. Cloud service providers, new entrants offering new services, more businesses converting to online, the efficiencies that come.
Jim Bidzos: AI is a relatively recent driver and certainly contributing to that as well. So I see the combination of that long trend line of just simple growth and adoption of online services that the ongoing move towards more digital efficient services. AI is a boost and the enduring value of a domain name and the very mature, and trusted because of all the security that has been built in over the last decades in the DNS.
Jim Bidzos: Our infrastructure, I think, is an important component of that. I just see those long trend lines, and I do not think in terms of quarters of years, obviously. We do as we report quarterly and annually, but I think those trend lines run much longer, and I think they bode well. I think also our carefully assessed, and measured addition of Verisign Informed to our offerings, the way it leverages our infrastructure. I think the long trend line favors that as well.
Jim Bidzos: New advanced services, agentic AI, et cetera. I think we are already seeing evidence that there are security challenges that come. We think offering tools that can close security gaps are very important. So, we tend to take the longer-term view, but I think you could certainly, looking out a year, I can see all of those factors coming into play. Registrars are very engaged. They are seeking more customers.
Jim Bidzos: There are a lot of factors driving their business as well. So, there is quite a bit of synergy in all of the factors that are driving this growth. There may be ups and downs along the way. There always are. But, I think the long trend line is really strong, and that is what we keep our eye on.
Ygal Arounian: Okay, great. Very helpful there. I want to ask, maybe if we could elaborate a little bit more on Verisign Informed. I guess first, can you help us understand why Verisign has the right to win in this business versus other cybersecurity providers? Why enterprises or consumers are choosing Verisign. Maybe particularly on the enterprise side, but on both, on what you can hit.
Ygal Arounian: Then I know you talked about pricing, finalizing pricing plans. If you could help investors think through maybe not the actual price, but the structure. What does pricing look like? How should we be thinking about, again, not the actual number, but what it means in general and how to think about it. Any help there would be great. Thank you.
Jim Bidzos: Well, let me take those in reverse order. I think with respect to pricing, we are just a few months away from having more to say about that, which I think will help people assess the opportunity. As I mentioned, we think this is a leveraged, carefully assessed core offering where the real synergy and what I think will make Verisign Informed strong.
Jim Bidzos: Back to the first part of your question, why Verisign Informed? I think it is really, first of all, OCSP, the Online Certificate Status Protocol, is difficult to do as quickly as we do DNS and operating in our infrastructure. We are going to offer that level of performance. The key distinction here is that there are a couple of things we can do.
Jim Bidzos: Number 1 is that at the time of making the trust decision, and here is another important aspect, whether that is a person-to-machine interaction or whether it is a machine-to-machine interaction, which it clearly will be with agentic AI becoming prevalent. Performance, speed, and reliability matter. I think all of those aspects of our high assurance infrastructure combined with this service, which closes these gaps if you do not do credential revocation, certificate revocation quickly, those gaps can be exploited.
Jim Bidzos: I think if we are learning anything at this point, we can see that AI is extremely good at identifying vulnerabilities, and those usually are followed up very quickly with AI-enabled attack chains. Closing all vulnerability windows as much as possible is really important and I think going to increase in importance. I think we just have a solid offering.
Jim Bidzos: With respect to why Verisign Informed, I would say it offers the sort of, and I think if you look at some of our blogs, I would say demonstrable reduction in risk when making trust decisions that are better informed. I think that value proposition will be of a great interest to a lot of folks out there. We are seeing it already in the financial industry. I think that will grow, in our opinion.
Ygal Arounian: All right, great. Thank you so much.
Jim Bidzos: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. We will take our next question from James Michael, Sherman, Lewis with Citi.
Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: Hi there. Thank you for taking my questions. Two here, if I may. First of all, with the .com price increase coming into effect, any early color here on registrar pricing actions or customer renewal rate benefits that you are seeing that could be mitigating the first-time renewal headwinds that you talked about earlier?
John Calys: Hi, James Michael. This is John. We have been watching closely what our registrars are doing with pricing, and at least for the last three months since we have announced the price increase, I think that was last April, or yeah, for .com-
Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: Yep
John Calys: we have not seen a significant increase in pricing on new registrations or renewals. Our analysis shows the price increases during that time period are in the neighborhood of 1% or even less. So we have not seen a lot of move. In the past, when we have done price increases, we have seen some registrars, in advance of the effective date, raise prices or in conjunction with the effective date. But so far, that is something we have not seen a lot of, but we do continue to keep our eye on that.
Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: Perfect.
Jim Bidzos: I guess I would just add. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Did not mean to interrupt.
Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: No, go ahead.
Jim Bidzos: I was just going to add to that, the price increase is $0.71, and I think given that we do not control the retail price, of course, that is set by the registrars. It is a modest price increase that they can certainly absorb and adjust accordingly. But the impact on the retail channel, where prices are unregulated, is different than our pricing. And we did provide
Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: Very helpful.
Jim Bidzos: as required, six months notice of the price increase, so it is not a surprise.
Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: Yep. Understood. Follow up here on the ICANN and new TLD realms. We saw the .PKI news, but there are other TLDs out there that are pretty key, including .agent. So curious if you could elaborate on your strategic approach overall to new TLD acquisition. Thank you.
Jim Bidzos: Sorry, James Michael, that was a specific question about .PKI?
John Calys: Yeah.
Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: .PKI-
John Calys: PKI
Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: and your strategic approach to new TLDs.
Jim Bidzos: Well, PKI, of course, stands for Public Key Infrastructure. This is something that VeriSign's parent company, RSA, brought to market back in the '80s and '90s. We wrote the standards. We enabled the first browsers with a full PKI suite that allowed e-commerce to flourish with security and the ability to conduct commerce. PKI has only grown since then. It is the critical trust component of much of the commerce that is conducted on the internet.
Jim Bidzos: Not only that, it also includes, as I mentioned, all the different use cases, code distribution and lots of other things. We have announced VeriSign Informed. That is very much a PKI-related service, and we think that there is some interesting things we are looking at considering with .PKI. We chose carefully, and that is the only TLD that we applied for, but we think it is very relevant to the security services that we provide.
Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: Okay. Thank you so much.
Jim Bidzos: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. We will take our last question from Aleksey Gogolev with JP Morgan.
Alexei Gogolev: Hello, everyone. Jim, I was wondering if you can maybe provide a bit more color and decompose Q3 net adds into gross adds versus deletions, and specifically how deletion and churn rates are performing, including any post promo churn. How is that trending versus last year?
John Calys: If I understand your question, you want commentary, Aleksey, on how our new registrations relate to deletes and the trends in deletes. Is that fair?
Alexei Gogolev: Yeah, because I am trying to understand what are you incorporating in the guidance of 6.5% to 7%. What sort of assumptions are embedded in terms of gross adds, deletions, renewals, and mix? Just trying to understand
John Calys: Yeah
Alexei Gogolev: some of those dynamics.
John Calys: Well, typically, we do not guide on each individual component. That is the first thing. What I would say is we do see continued good demand for registrations. We expect that to hold up reasonably well. Of course, Q4 has the holiday season in it, and that usually creates a little bit of a seasonal downturn for us. As far as deletions go, I think it is really what we have already talked about, and that is we are going to continue to see a greater mix of first-time renewing names.
John Calys: Those names renew at almost half the rate of previously renewed names. As the proportion of the entire base has more first-time renewing names, it is just a natural occurrence that the renewal rate will drop slightly. We are forecasting that for the Q4. Beyond that, I do not know if there is more that I can say. I don't know, Jim, if you have any additional comments or not.
Jim Bidzos: Yeah. I think your question was about trends. I guess there are no trends that we think are significant, such that we are calling them out as something substantially different to what we have done in the past. What John described, a first-time renewal rate in the 40s and a second or subsequent renewal rate in the mid-80s, has held pretty constant.
Jim Bidzos: Whenever we get a boost, we saw this in 2016 when we had a large China surge. We saw first-time renewal rates just kind of fall off the edge in the year or two that followed because of the huge, sudden and abrupt number of first-time renewing rates. I think this is not nearly as dramatic as that. Secondly, I think the underlying drivers for these registrations is quite different.
Jim Bidzos: I think that our analysis, I can share this, our analysis of the websites, I am sorry, the new registrations that we are getting, to the extent we can identify the purpose of the websites, is that they fall into our cohort that is the best renewing cohort, the online presence cohort. I think this sort of ties into people finding it easier with AI to develop a meaningful website and get an online presence. I think in the long run, we will see basically, if there are any significant deviations, some regression to the mean that has held over a very long period of time.
Alexei Gogolev: Thank you for that, Jim. You noted that the registrar retail pricing has only moved about 1% or less since the April .com notice. Do you expect a step-up closer to the effective date? What is your best read on elasticity versus renewal impact from that $0.71 wholesale increase?
Jim Bidzos: Yeah, that is a tough one to answer. I think that what we are seeing with the various tailwinds and the various factors driving these new registrations, obviously, if we are seeing a benefit from it, the registrars are seeing even more because they have the freedom of pricing, and of course, they have base of .coms that renew.
Jim Bidzos: Many registrars are renewing .coms at twice the wholesale price. I think that is a factor that just sort of argues that it might be easier to stay focused on what they are doing. I cannot speak for them, but I think that if they have found formulas that are working, perhaps they have had 6 months to prepare, and so maybe it is a rate of growth that they enjoy and want to continue. I am not sure. It is a modest increase that I think they can absorb.
Jim Bidzos: We track their retail prices, of course, and there is certainly room there, but I think they are obviously selling the domain names that we are registering, so they are getting a benefit. I expect they are making decisions that drive their business, which drives ours.
Alexei Gogolev: Thank you, Jim. Just to clarify, are you seeing any meaningful early renewal activity ahead of the .com increase, like maybe a cash pull forward or renewal date shifts? How should we think about the knock-on impact to the timing of recognized revenue versus cash?
Jim Bidzos: That is for John, I think.
John Calys: Yeah. Aleksey, we have not seen a lot of early renewals at this point, so we are not necessarily seeing a pull forward of renewals to the lower price point pre-1 November. We obviously watch for that, but we have not seen any significant evidence of that. There is still another week or so before the price increase, so I cannot predict what has happened during that time, but we have not seen anything yet.
Jim Bidzos: I think I would just add too, that even with the price increase, .com is still very competitively priced with respect to all of the other generic TLDs that are out there. I think that is a factor. The average price of those other TLDs is much higher than .coms, even with this price increase.
John Calys: It is true.
David Atchley: Aleksey, to your second point, just wanted to mention, and I think we addressed this maybe on the last call as far as the revenue recognition. We said last call that expect about 50% of the .com price increase to flow through in revenue in 2027, most of the rest of that in 2028. I do not know if that was the second part of your question, but I just wanted to touch on that.
Alexei Gogolev: Thank you, David. I just wanted to confirm that that hasn't changed. And final question, Jim. At a high level, what's the monetization unit for Informed? Is it going to be per OCSP query or maybe per certificate? And what milestones between now and H1 of next year would you point to that would validate that the product market fit?
Jim Bidzos: Right. I think the best way to answer that question is to ask you to follow our microsite, Verisign Informed. We're posting blogs that provide additional information. We're very engaged in a number of standards bodies, both the American National Standards Institute, the C2PA creators forum. There are standards engagement, and we're engaged with a variety of service providers, and we'll be providing updates on that website.
Jim Bidzos: I would say right now, we announced also that we're opening the beta phase, so I think you'll start seeing things roll out on that website. The high level plan, as I mentioned, is pricing by the end of the year, pricing structure, and availability of the service in H1 of 2027. But all of those updates will be rolling out. There are also a number of seminars that we're doing jointly with Forrester and some other folks.
Jim Bidzos: We've already done one. We'll be doing some other public events. So there'll be a steady rollout of information that I think will give you the complete picture. I think it's a bit early for me to sort of predict exactly how that will play out or what the milestones will be. We're certainly seeing substantial interest and activity.
Jim Bidzos: Security is only becoming more important, so the interest is high, and I think what we are seeing, I think we're seeing an understanding and an appreciation for what the synergy that comes from our high assurance infrastructure and providing this service globally at the level of performance that we can, we've seen has some people rethinking this, understanding that something that perhaps they didn't think was actually practically available as a practical matter is. So we'll see how that plays out. But follow the microsite, and obviously we'll update you every quarter.
Alexei Gogolev: Thank you, Jim.
Jim Bidzos: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. This concludes today's question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back to David Atchley for any closing remarks.
David Atchley: 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: This does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
