Broadcom CEO Hock Tan attempted to downplay the effects of the COVID-19 coronavirus on revenues before pulling the company's 2020 guidance during the chipmaker's first-quarter earnings call Thursday.

"Well, certainly it was the best of times. It is now the worst of times, and we certainly live in a very interesting time," Tan said, borrowing heavily from the opening of a "Tale of Two Cities," according to a transcript.

The reference was reflected in the contents of the call, which was every bit about the company's financial performance as it was about the perceived consequences of COVID-19 on Broadcom's financial footing moving forward.

Throughout the call, Tan and CFO Tom Krause attempt to minimize the virus' impact, arguing that because Broadcom's largest customers are in the enterprise space, the company is somewhat insulated from the most damaging economic effects.

"Most of all our businesses are related to enterprise and infrastructure as opposed to the consumer base," Tan told investors on the call. "And as we know, the pandemic of COVID-19 is obviously hitting the people, the individual, the consumer. So we have that level of buffer before we see it, and we recognize it."

While Tan resisted any inclination to speculate, he suggested that as more people choose to stay or work from home, pressure on cloud services could actually prompt additional sales of Broadcom hardware.

But while Tan attempted to quell investor fears, he said there was still much uncertainty, and that while the company had yet to experience supply chain interruptions or meaningful declines in bookings, it was hard to say what the second half the year might hold.

"There is no doubt COVID-19 has created a high level of uncertainty, which we can't help but think is going to have an impact on our semiconductor business, in particular in the second half the year," he said. "We believe it is only prudent that we withdraw our annual financial guidance until such time that visibility returns to pre-COVID-19 levels."

According to Krause, this uncertainty will drive the company to focus on maintaining higher than normal liquidity and hold off on paying down debt until the second-half of 2020.

Broadcom posted consolidated net revenues of $5.9 billion for the quarter, which was up 1% year over year.

The company's semiconductor business accounted for roughly 72% of revenues during the quarter, amounting to $4.2 billion, which was down 4% year over year and down 8% sequentially.

A bright spot in the chipmaker's first-quarter earnings was in its software infrastructure division, which posted $1.7 billion in revenues, up 19% year over year, and up 39% sequentially.

Tan said he expects software infrastructure revenues to stabilize and sustain from quarter to quarter moving forward as the company aims to complete the integration of Symantec, which the company acquired in August 2019.

While Broadcom pulled its full-year guidance, Tan spoke briefly on their near-term expectations.

"We expect our second-quarter revenue to be $5.7 billion, which reflects a typical sequential drop, slight drop in wireless seasonality," Tan said. "We expect our semiconductor business this Q2 overall to be virtually flat from a year ago, this after year-on-year reduction over the last four quarters."