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DigitalOcean files to go public

by — Services 0 Comments

Cloud platform has over 570,000 customers, including Domain Name Wire.

Chart showing ARR at DigitalOcean

Annual run-rate revenue at DigitalOcean is charging up to the right. The company filed for an IPO this week.

Cloud platform DigitalOcean has filed to go public, planning to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker DOCN. It currently lists the raise at $100 million.

The company was founded in 2012. Last year, it generated $318.4 million in revenue, up from $254.8 million in 2019.

It lost $43.6 million in 2020. The company calculates an adjusted EBITDA number that clocked in at $95.9 million last year, up from $55.2 million in 2019. The biggest drivers of the adjusted number last year were $75.6 million in depreciation and amortization and $29.5 million in stock-based compensation.

The company boasts 573,000 customers as of December 31, up from 502,000 in Dec 2018.

38% of its revenue last year came from North America, 30% from Europe, and 22% from Asia.

The monthly average revenue per user was $47.78 in 2020, up from $35.97 two years earlier.

DigitalOcean was carrying $263.7 million of debt as of Dec 31, 2020.

Former GoDaddy CEO Warren Adelman joined the company’s board in Nov 2020.

Domain Name Wire uses DigitalOcean for hosting.

One person spends $4.85 million in domain auction

by — Domain Sales 17 Comments

Bidder picks up Bird.com, Fish.com and Tattoo.com.

The word "Sold" in big letters in quote on red background

A single bidder has scooped up several of the high dollar domains in today’s Right of the Dot domain name auction.

A bidder using an IP address from Queenstown, Maryland paid $2.5 million for Bird.com, $1.6 million for Fish.com, and $750,000 for Tattoo.com.

In a Clubhouse room organized by DomainSherpa, the general consensus after Bird.com sold was that the scooter company that uses Bird.co bought it. That theory was quickly shot after Fish.com sold. At that point, it seemed like a pet supplies company. But then…tattoo.com?

Bird.com and Fish.com were sold by the same person, who will certainly be celebrating tonight.

It will be interesting to see who the buyer is.

(An original version of this post incorrectly stated that Fish.com sold for $1.5 million, not $1.6 million.)

ROTD live virtual domain name auction today

by — Domain Sales 2 Comments

There’s an open bar in your kitchen for today’s live domain auction.

The words "domain name auction" overlayed on photo of auctioneer gavel

Right of the Dot is holding a live domain name auction today with 108 domain names.

The company previously held events in conjunction with NamesCon and the TRAFFIC conferences. While in-person live domain auctions aren’t possible during Covid, Right of the Dot has set up a studio in Texas with auctioneer Wayne Wheat to get as close as possible to the in-person experience.

Right of the Dot started with hundreds of domains available for pre-bidding and narrowed it down overnight to 108 lots for the live auction. The others will be available in an online auction after today’s main event.

The final list of live auction domains includes a mix of great domains with reserves and less valuable domains with no reserve. Notable names include Asian.com, Greece.com, and Emily.com.

The live auction kicks off today at 12 pm CST. The silent auction concludes on March 4. Bidding information is available at RightofTheDot.com.

 

End user domain sales up to $117,500

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A three-letter domain sale tops Sedo’s weekly list.

picture of rolled currency with the words "end-user domain sales"

Sedo’s top public sale this past week was PLP.com for $117,500. It’s a nice six-figure sale, as every decent three-letter end user domain sale should be.

Keep in mind that Sedo doesn’t publish information about all domain sales. 1/3 of its sales dollar volume last year was for domains with confidentiality requirements. So there are likely lots of sales like PLP.com that we never learn about.

Here’s what I dug up for recent end user sales at Sedo. (You can view previous lists like this here.)

PLP.com $117,500 – Preformed Line Products (PLP) is an international designer, manufacturer and supplier of cable anchoring and control hardware and systems, fiber optic and copper splice closures, and high-speed cross-connect devices. It goes by the abbreviated name PLP, and forwards its new three-letter domain to its website at Preformed.com.

OneCandy.com $12,500 – Candy Capital is a privately-held family-run firm established by British entrepreneur and businessman Nick Candy to manage his personal business interests and group of companies. The company uses the domain CandyCapital.com.

Samudra.com £10,000 – Samudra manufactures pumps and motors. It forwards this domain to SamudraPumps.com.

Mail.hr €8,000 – The domain now forwards to Mail.de, a German email services provider.

EUTech.org €6,000 – MuP Verwaltungs- und Beteiligungs AG, or MUP Group, bought this domain. This is a German service provider across multiple sectors like engineering, construction and project management, renewable energies, real estate development, infrastructure and water management.

IU.at €5,000 – IUBH is an international private university in Germany. It forwards the domain to IUBH.de.

We-Link.com $4,900 – Whois shows a company called We Link in France. There’s a company in France by this name that provides sales technology.

Tipos.de €4,250 – Tipos is a Point of Sale system provider.

Blumenheld.de €3,500 – The domain forwards to Pure-Hygiene.de, which is a German company that sells water disinfectants.

Meddrop.com $3,499 – Meddrop GmbH is a German bio-med company that manufactures and sells cosmetic and medical devices under the brand names Dermadrop, SEYO and Vetdrrop.

TravelNorth.com $2,445 – This domain forwards to the website for Vitus at Vitusreiser.no. It’s a Norwegian tour company offering outdoor travel experiences.

RockIslandAuctions .com $2,399 – Rock Island Auction Company, a collectible firearms dealer, bought this domain and forwards it to RockIslandAuction .com.

Objektiv.de €2,200 – Objectiv manufactures furniture and products for improving a room’s acoustics.

BlackLawyersMatter.org $2,195 – Law School Admission Council (LSAC) is a nonprofit organization whose members include more than 200 law schools throughout the United States, Canada and Australia. It administers the LSAT exam.

8 notable takeaways from 2021 Global Domain Report

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This is what stood out to me in this year’s Global Domain Report.

Image of a report cover with the words "2021 Global Domain Report"

InterNetX and Sedo released their annual Global Domain Report this week. The 76-page report recaps what happened in 2020 and looks forward to 2021. The data-rich report uses data collected by the two companies and third parties. You can download it here.

Here are eight things in the report that stood out to me.

Europe loves its ccTLDs (page 16) – travel to many countries outside of the United States and you’ll see a curious thing: the near absence of .com. Businesses in many countries prefer their local country code domain name to .com. A chart breaks down the number of domains registered per 100,000 inhabitants in many countries. Several European countries have standout numbers. The Netherlands leads the pack at about 35,000 domains registered per 100,000 inhabitants. Of course, some people/companies register more than one, and foreigners can register some ccTLDs.

Lots of domains are registered each year even though the base only grows slowly (page 24) – The total base of registered .com domain names inches up slowly. In September, the total number of registered .com domains hit 150 million. Now it’s at 153 million five months later. But with so many deletions every month, a lot of registrations (or re-registrations) are necessary to keep that number moving up. A chart on page 24 shows that there were nearly 38 million new .com registrations last year.

Usage numbers are staggering (page 25-26) – There are many ways to measure if a domain name is being used or not. I think numbers showing usage are mostly inflated. But the report uses DomainsBot’s definition of usage to show the TLDs with the most and least usage. .Com, .org and .net lead the way, but there are some new TLDs on the list as well. The namespaces with the most undeveloped domains and inactive domains include cheap new TLDs, but there are also many .com, .net, and .org domains that don’t resolve at all.

Don’t drop the ‘the’ (page 45) – InterNetX has a database of 2.6 million aftermarket domain sales. It calculated which words show up most often in these domains. The, home, and free lead the list. Free is a surprise to me. Keep in mind that this list is from a long period, not just the past year.

More domains sold in 2020… (pages 37, 52) – Sedo sold more domains in 2020 than in 2019. You can kind of see this in a chart on page 37, but that chart is missing a y-axis. It’s quantified on page 52, though: there was a 26% increase in sales volume.

…at a lower median price (page 57) – Median sale prices at Sedo were down for .com, .net and .org in 2020. This is likely because Sedo scrapped its minimum sales fee mid-2019, so many more low-priced domains sold. It might also be due to more expired domain sales. The median for .com fell from $630 to $332. The average for .com fell from $2,693 to $2,223.

Those sales lists don’t include everything (page 59) – Sedo helps the industry by sending lists of sales over $2,000 to blogs like Domain Name Wire each week. There are a couple of things you should note. First, given that it’s limited to sales over $2,000 and the median price last year was $435, it’s missing many sales at the bottom end. Second, the lists often exclude the biggest sales. 14% of Sedo’s sales last year were kept confidential, and they represented 1/3 of the total dollar value.

Sell with Buy Now prices (page 61) – 2/3rds of Sedo’s sales in 2020 were buy now transactions! Top public buy now transactions included Instructions.com for $65,026, HotelsGuide.com for $59,575, Hop.in for $50,000, and trajectory.com $50,000. Oh, and SedoMLS now accounts for 1/3 of Sedo’s sales.

Read the full report here.

 

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