Good afternoon, everyone, thank you for standing by. My name is Tamia, and I will be your conference operator today. This call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] At this time, for opening remarks, I would like to pass the call over to Jason Starr, Head of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Tamia. Good afternoon. Welcome to Gen's First 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 our 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, August 1, 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 statements 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.

Thanks, Jason, and welcome, everyone, to our Q1 earnings call. We have started fiscal '25 on a good note with our operating KPIs supporting our long-term aspirations. We grew cyber safety bookings 4% in constant currency and reached a record direct customer count of 39.3 million, up 1.1 million year-over-year. . Additionally, ARPU is up sequentially and year-over-year in constant currency and retention reached 78%, a Gen record supported by record level in LifeLock and Avast. Our consistent focus on execution resulted in another double-digit growth quarter for earnings per share at $0.53 in Q1, up 15% in constant currency. I'm proud of our team for delivering these results and for our continued focus on evolving cyber safety for consumers in a very dynamic threat landscape. Before Natalie walks you through the details of our results, I would like first to remind everyone about our strategic opportunity and the steady progress we are making to achieve our cyber safety mission. Whether it is a biometric payment at the retail store or our personal performance data combined with recommendation algorithm to buy sportswear, it seems like not a day goes by where we don't do something digitally without sharing more personal information. And while these experiences can be convenient, our growing digital life leads to the proliferation of sensitive personal information, which is difficult to properly safeguard as it is increasingly out of our control. We depend on our banks, our government institutions and mobile providers and our retailers to protect our data. And yet, as we can all see by the ever-increasing number of data breaches in all industries, it is tremendously hard for them to do. In just the first half of 2024, we have seen more than 2,000 reported breaches per month across the globe. And those are…

Thank you, Vincent, and hello, everyone. For today's call, I will walk through our fiscal Q1 2025 results followed by our outlook for Q2 and full year fiscal year 2025. I will focus on non-GAAP financials and year-over-year growth rates unless otherwise stated. Before I begin, I want to highlight that -- as disclosed in today's presentation and our recent Form 8-K, we made a revision to our historical practice of when we recognize revenue for certain customers changing from successful bill date to renewal date. The impact of the revision is immaterial however for comparative purposes, we have corrected for this in prior periods reported. Please refer to the supplemental information section of today's slide presentation available on our IR website as well as our Q1 Form 10-Q for more details. Now turning to Q1 results. Q1 was another quarter of solid execution with financial results at the midpoint of our guidance and reflects our 20th consecutive quarter of growth. Q1 bookings were $913 million, up 3% in USD and 4% in constant currency. Cyber Safety bookings, which exclude our legacy business lines, also grew 4% year-over-year in constant currency. Total Q1 revenue was $965 million, up 2% in USD and up 3% in constant currency. Cyber safety revenue grew 4% year-over-year in constant currency, driven by our privacy and identity business lines as well as continued cross-sell penetration into the Norton base. In the U.S., we also grew 4% with expanding demand for privacy and identity protection services, attracting new customers through direct and partner channels and scaling cross-sells with our existing customers. We also continued to further penetrate international markets with varying degrees of market maturity as we continue to seed new acquisitions and expand the reach of our cyber safety services. We will continue to execute…

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Dan Bergstrom with RBC.

It's Dan Bergstrom for Matt Hedberg. It was nice to see the uptick in retention this quarter. I guess what are some initiatives there that are working well for you from a retention perspective? And then is there maybe a good way to think about retention in the sense of -- was there some low-hanging fruit following the merger and incremental gains from here, maybe a little more challenging? Or is it more of a steady march to that 80% target?

Yes. Thanks for your question. This is Vincent. And I'll take that answer. Just as a context for those who were not here 18 months ago, when we merged with Avast, our retention rate on an aggregated basis for all the brands and the new gen company was around 75%. And we identified about 5 points overall improvement that would drive all the way to our target 80% retention rate for Jen. A big portion of that improvement was for Aavas itself was around 65% retention, and we told we could bring that business to a 75% retention rate overall. And so initially, yes, we had a few low-hanging food, as you know, or as you remember, Norton LifeLock combined was at a retention rate closer to 85%. And we had a lot of good practices around the whole customer journey, breaking it down by the different experiences that a customer would have in trying to get the best optimal output for those. We apply those expertise and practices to the entire portfolio and improve for first 2 points from 75% to 77%. And then we said that the remaining will be over the next few quarters, maybe next couple of years as we really roll out the new gen stack. So this quarter, we reached 78% with actually an Avast record retention rate of 72% and but also improve a LifeLock retention rate to a record level as well. And I think you see here 2 -- the benefit of 2 dynamics. The first 1 is the rollout of the new Gen stack, which is much more aligned to a suite with high engagement in-app communications -- and that engagement and the ability to demonstrate the value to the customers has led to improved retention rate. And then the second component to this is the work we've done and the work we are doing in breaking down the journey of the customers through our cyber safety cycles and really providing the right value at the right time using some of the AI and data analytics that we have built, and we're going to continue to roll those 2, the new Gen stack migration towards a suite approach on 1 side and then the buildup of new features and AI-enabled communications into that suite.

That's very impressive. And then you called out cross-sell a number of times in the prepared remarks, and it is 1 of those 5 or 5 drivers through Investor Day. How should we think about cross-sell in the context of maybe what you've accomplished so far using, let's say, a vast as a template this time? And then what could still be done here on Norton and LifeLock from a cross-sell perspective?

Yes. So as we discussed 6, 8 months ago now, and that is there, right, we say 1 of the 5 drivers was to increase the cross-sell and basically behind that. it basically means moving customers that have entered cyber safety from a point product to a broader comprehensive cyber safety privacy and some of the identity features have been a very strong cross-sell this quarter. Before that, it was really about taking the products from the Avast portfolio that was more point products specifically and cross-selling into the Norton base and using their practice of cross-selling, if you want, again, at the right time and using as much as we can, data scientists to deliver the right message at the right time. I think we've seen a trend of moving more and more towards that either total comprehensive cyber safety or towards more that privacy identity angle -- and we'll see -- you'll see us continue to develop that. We have more room into Norton where we've made progress, but it will be a 3-year road map, as you know. And then we still have a lot of room in what you did mention, which is the upsell, which is the migration towards the overall suite. Today, we're slightly above 40% in the total portfolio. And I think we have an opportunity to go to where we had brought the Northern LifeLock portfolio, which was 60%. So both cross-sell and upsell have made progress identity and privacy where essentially the focus and cross-sell plus upsell is the big opportunity moving forward.

The next question comes from Peter Levine with Evercore.

Natalie, just the first 1 for you is as you think about the guidance for the remainder year what assumptions are baked into that? And then how do you think about the health of the consumer? Any color that you can give us around kind of what you're seeing from your pipeline in terms of just the overall health of the consumer into fiscal '25 versus where you were, call it, 6 to 12 months last year.

Yes. Thanks for the question. So the guide is very much in line with the plans that we've articulated for you guys. It's -- the 5 for 5 is the structural growth framework and not that every 1 of those levers hit the same order of magnitude at the same quarters in the same years. But that is our strategic growth framework, and we've got the business aligned to that. In terms of Yes, the team is focused on gross acquisition. Very, very important to get the health at the top of the funnel. We've spent a lot of time and focus on figuring out all the different cohorts that we've got in our customer base and how we retain them at the highest rates possible. And then ARPU, right? We've got to make sure that we continuously stay focused on having the most robust product road map that can fuel our growth opportunities in both cross-sell as well as upsell and again, continuously communicate with our customers that we have the most relevant, most comprehensive cyber safety protection in the market. And so all of those things coming together as we navigate through the year is what helps us shore up not only the Q2 guide, but our reiteration of the full year guide. And then in terms of the health of the consumer, look, there's been a lot of movement and a lot of things in the news in the last couple of days. But what I can tell you is what I can see within our business. And so we are growing customers, both from a gross adds perspective, we've just seen our highest Q1 that we've seen in 4 years. From a cancellation perspective, we've seen the lowest number of cancels we've seen in the last 3 years. So whether that's the health of the customer or that's the awareness of the ever-increasing cyber safety threats that we've got combined with our trusted brands, from a customer count perspective, we see health and we see growth. And then combine that with the other 2 legs of the stool, as I speak about it in terms of what is happening in ARPU. Affects aside, we are growing ARPU consistently quarter-over-quarter, and we have seen increases in the last year across our brands in retention rate. And so from the measures of our customer in those 3 key performance indicators, I see a lot of help in our customer base.

And then if I can jump to the product side. I think last quarter, we talked and we touched the least on the ask. I think it was asked on silver the membership offering, and you talked about the newer Gen Stack initiative. Can you maybe just give us an update on how that's trending?

Yes. So on the rollout of the new Gen stack, we started at the end of the fiscal year. We just have a couple of small countries in the Asia region to test. We had very good positive results. Since then, we've expanded to a few more countries. We rolled out our first new cohorts because we're doing by customer cohort in the U.S. We're very cautious monitoring, monitoring the first -- the NPS after first rollout, measuring the engagement, comparing that to prior. And we said it will take the full year to roll out the new stock -- and I think we're on track to that, and we're not changing that time line. We're pleased by what we see so far. There's up and down. Obviously, we roll out new adjustments and as we get customer feedback, but overall, pretty positive.

The following comes from Tomer Zilberman with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Maybe just two quick questions for me. So this quarter, your sequential direct customer adds came in pretty strong, and you also talked about cross-sell penetration now nearing the with your guidance -- or excuse me, with your performance falling in line with your guidance, my question is, how did the difference between existing customers and new customers play in per your expectation or versus your expectations? Three months ago, was it in line? Or did you see 1 of the 2 performing better than expected?

Yes, I would say it's a balance across the metrics, and we've got different teams aligned to different segments of that 5 to 5 strategic growth framework. In terms of how the customers performed, we are honestly working extremely, really hard from a disciplined fashion to free up as much capacity for investment for growth as we can. And so we've made a commitment, and we stand behind that commitment in operation and execution to continue to invest in marketing. That marketing goes to the top of the funnel. So we are not surprised by the growth in customer count on a sequential basis. And so from a gross adds perspective, like I said, it's the highest gross adds we've seen in several years. And then from a retention perspective and ARPU perspective, the levers of cross-sell. We are just getting started, quite honestly. We're very, very proud of the performance that our teams have driven in cross-sell penetration of the Norton base moving from 15% to 20% in the last year. But we are at 20%, and we feel like we have a ways to go, especially because we're not dealing or we're not selling into a stagnant customer base with a stagnant product portfolio, both are growing. And so we will continuously invest in product and technology enhance our value proposition. We will continuously work to cut through the message with our trusted brand and services to our customers, and we'll continue to focus on retention to make sure that the customers that we've got want to stay with us, and they're getting world-class customer service and protected by a product and technology value creation that is ever increasing.

Got it. So maybe as a follow-up, moving to ARPU and some of the FX headwinds. What sort of hedging activities are you putting in place to protect against the weakening yen.

I don't hedge against the yen from currency rate perspective. We fix a rate at the beginning, and that's why we report USD versus constant currency. .

The next question comes from Saket Kalia with Barclays.

Vincent, Natalie I joined late, so apologies -- so apologies if some of these have been asked, but Vincent, maybe just to start with you on just another part of the business. I think we get into the benefits enrollment season next quarter. And I know that last year, there was a little bit of lumpiness there. And can you just talk a little bit about how that pipeline looks? And maybe anything that you think about doing differently this time versus last year?

Yes, absolutely, Saket. And no worries about joining late. The good news is we're recording the call, and we gave a lot of good information on where we stand with our business overall. We feel pretty good. You may have heard or we may have already joined our partner this quarter partner business, which is 10% of our overall business, it grew 6% in constant currency. As you know, it's made of categories, and I'm summarizing the context to give everybody context to your question. And it's about telcos selling 2 telcos solutions, our employee benefit strategic relationships and then retail. Both telcos and EB will continue to grow double digit within that partnership revenue. And what you refer to is the fact that we signed a new -- a set of new accounts and then ahead of the enrollment time for employee benefit which start normally around October, October to February time zone, we may or may not close bigger deals into new accounts. So we've continued to invest into building up our overall coverage of the entire set of companies working through brokers. We have a very healthy funnel. And I think not different than last year, we will try to, as aggressively as we can close as many deals as we can. Now obviously, when it comes to estimating which deal force into the full annual guidance, we feel we definitely have a very healthy funnel to cover the forecast for the year.

Got it. Got it. That's very helpful. Natalie, maybe for my follow-up for you. Listen, the operating margin also speaks for itself. My question was just maybe on the gross margin. Last couple of quarters, it's just, I don't know, maybe like 100 basis points lower than it's been from the prior few quarters. So maybe the question is, can you talk to just any investments that are going into cost of sales? Or anything that we should continue there that should anything we should think about as we model growth, the difference between gross margin and OpEx going forward?

Saket, thanks for the question. Yes, I think it is definitely appropriate to call out just what high margins we operate the business from both the gross margin and the operating margin. Operating margin has improved 7 points over the last 3 years, up 5 points over the last 2 years. So I think that is the real measure of how we operate. It's a disciplined approach. It is one of very, very high margin, and we are committed to that. However, we also said as we navigate the business forward, although we're going to operate the core at those very high margins that we've been increasing to, we also reserve the right to invest in areas of growth that we believe are healthy and that will lead us to supporting the 5 to 5 growth strategy because everyone wants to see an accelerating rate of growth on the top line. And so although you see 86.3% gross margin this quarter, that's flat quarter-over-quarter, down year-over-year, yes, but I would ask that you just zoom out a bit further. Gross margin is relatively stable. If you look back at 22%, you look back at 23%, it's incredibly stable. I would say the only pop that I would say that we've seen is honestly just P&L geography of our investments. We will continue to put firepower behind profitable, healthy ROI marketing investment to drive the top of the funnel and that's all you're seeing with the gross margin variability. I would say, zoom out, look at the overall 86% to 87% range on gross margin and look to the operating margin health and stability that we've delivered over the last few years.

The final question comes from Hamza Fodderwala with Morgan Stanley.

This is John on for Hamza. And great results in a very tough environment. Vincent, just for you, can you just talk about how -- you mentioned Gen AI in the prepared remarks, but -- can you just touch a little deeper into kind of what's driving growth there in terms of maybe brand awareness across different geos? And just what the opportunity overall there looks like?

Yes. Definitely, we've seen -- first of all, on the upstream, we've seen definitely a very strong double-digit growth increase on data breaches and data getting into the hands of the overall hacking community. We've seen a surge of increased scams, and other things using some of those social engineering techniques to combine data breached with other private information that may sit in the -- on the web and making the scans more and more relatable personable -- and with that, obviously, increasing the risks for consumers. As you know, we've decided to use AI to combat AI, and we had launched Nortan Genie to detect those scams more and more. We have now well over 1 million users or download of that Norton Genie app and emerging for the second half, we're migrating that to integrate a basic anti-scam AI-supported features into multiple product sets. So you'll see more and more shift towards using AI to detect AI-generated scam today.

Got it. That's very helpful. And just for my follow-up for Natalie. So net adds were obviously very strong again this quarter. Can you just talk a little bit about the contribution across different geographies? And maybe any color on how you're thinking about net adds tracking throughout the year if you have any visibility?

Sure. I would say it's pretty broad-based. We look at it both online as well as mobile. We look at it by geography. We look at it across brands. And I would say when we look at the multiyear trending, we are headed in the right direction. And so I would say it's broad-based. We have called out the -- as we expand in the global expansion portion of our 5 for 5 and focus on acquisition not only direct into, I would say, low penetrated markets or underdeveloped markets as well as through our partner channels, we know that the customers that we are able to acquire come in all shapes and sizes, so to speak. And so we've got to figure out a way to balance those through our model -- but what we really focus on is the acquisition coming through with economics that we like and that point to health and sustainability. And the answer is yes, no matter which pivots that you look at, whether it's geography, whether it's brand or whether it's the way that consumers engage with us. And so that's great. And then in terms of where we're going, I don't guide customer count quarter in, quarter out. But what I would really point you to is our commitment to continue to create the capacity to invest for growth. We are here to accelerate the rate of growth of this business, and there's no way we can do that if we don't really focus that fair share at the top of the funnel with net new acquisition. Gross adds, yes, but also net customer adds as we continue to focus on delighting our customers and therefore, increasing the retention rate of our existing customers. Both are so, so critically important for our business model, and we will continue to invest in growing the top of the funnel and then servicing our customers all the way through their journey to make sure that they retain at the highest rate possible.

There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back to Vincent Pilette for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. As the leading company in consumer cyber safety, we have a bold vision to provide digital freedom for everyone. The threat landscape is more dynamic than ever, and our investments in technology, AI and product innovation are key to our success and future opportunities. . We have a compelling AI-enabled product road map focused on security, financial safety, personal data control and verification. Our go-to-market strategy is effective, and we have a long track record of serving our customers. we are well positioned to expand the adoption of cyber safety globally with our trusted brands and omnichannel expertise. Thank you for your interest and your support.

This concludes the conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.