Company sells big portfolio, enters into $1.8M expired domain name deal, and sees domain name parking revenue flatline.
Domain name wholesaler Tucows Inc (AMEX: TCX) has sold a portfolio of 2,553 domain names for $1 million, the company announced in its quarterly earnings call yesterday. That’s an average of $392 per domain name. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company reported that the same buyer has rights to purchase up to $1.8 million more in domain names under similar terms between now and June 2010.
On the conference call, Tucows CEO Elliot Noss said the continuation deal gives a buyer rights to buy expired domain names from Tucows as they expire. The company just inked a deal to send domain names to NameJet. It sounds like Tucows has a separate deal to offer expiring domains to a third party buyer either before domains go to NameJet or sell remnants that aren’t purchased at NameJet. I have contacted Tucows for clarification. [Read response from Tucows].
In a positive sign for the domain name parking business, Tucows reported that its domain name parking revenue flatlined over the fourth quarter, ending a trend of dropping revenue.
Tucows continues to grow its domain name registration business, with new registrations up 9% compared to the same quarter last year and renewals up 15%. Since its domain names are mostly sold through resellers such as web hosts, Tucows says it has a higher proportion of domain names in use (as opposed to parked) compared to other domain registrars.
The company also announced it is purchasing up to 4 million shares of its stock for 32-45 cents each.
Once parking revenues hit zero it has to flatline, they can’t go down anymore=)
so tucows has given one unnamed external entity the right to peruse/buy all of their drops first, then whatever is left goes to namejet….. I guess all the bad press about tucows hoarding the good drop names themselves, makes this deal inevitable
perhaps this scenario is why afternic hasn’t really shed a tear about losing this drop inventory, as there’s nothing left to sell. either tucows or the new unnamed entity gets first crack at the quality drops and now namejet will be selling the scraps
Do we know for sure that the external entity is not somehow affiliated with Tucows? It would save Mudd on their face if they tried to hide behind a “3rd Party” or worst yet, but not out of the spectrum these days… a possible conflict of interest with someone internally to get richer or hide some $$$.
Just a thought…
Joel
@DomainBuilders.com @3,
The company we did the deal with is in no way related to Tucows or any of its employees.
We’ve been pretty upfront about the fact that we keep a small amount of expired names for ourselves so there would be no value in us hiding the fact as you are suggesting.
Cheers,
Ken.
Ken sure seems like a friendly guy! However, the question about ItsYourdomain.com’s (IYD) acquisition by Tucows (about 700k domains) last year still goes unanswered. IYD was probably the only registrar submitting to Snapname purchases that literally sold expired domains and NEVER updated the new purchaser’s whois info on their system.
This information was pointed out to me by Dub-A himself, here on DNW, about a year ago. Dub-A pointed out outrageous behavior by IYD that I first misinterpreted. Dub-A’s info put a whole new light on IYD. This should have been a huge story, but then NetSol put up their idiotic “domain lockdown for your own protection” scheme which stole the limelight, and IYD escaped further scrutiny.
I bought about four domains at Snap that were submitted by IYD, and each of them never had my whois info updated to show I owned them. The discussion of this is on my blog, where Double A provided the domain whois breakdown. Tucows returned one of them to me after months of public complaints.
I’d be more receptive to Tucows if they illuminated us on the IYD acquisition, what brought them to purchase this registrar, and why they didn’t fix the whois updating problem after they purchased IYD as it was publicly discussed/complained about. I have a suspicion that IYD’s domains, possibly ill-gotten from the failures of whois updating that I experienced, have provided Tucows with a wealth of aftermarket goodies – and this company Tucows acquired, is rarely, if ever, mentioned.
Ken? Bill? Elliot? Love to have you clear this up. Do it here, on Dub-A’s site if you want (although there are very thorough articles about this issue on my blog at http://www.successclick.com. Sorry Dub-A!)
@Stephen @7:
I understand that you were really upset about a few domains you had at IYD a while ago. I’m sorry it wasn’t a good experience for you.
You and I have communicated quite a bit via email on this topic and my understanding was that we’d resolved your concerns back in November. If you’re still unclear on what happened or what we’ve done to help you out, please contact me privately and we’ll work through it again.
BTW, we shut down IYD entirely in December and all names that were with IYD are now on Tucows’ accreditation and are covered by the same policies and protections as all our domains are.
Cheers,
Ken.
@Ken,
Yes, you were very good in answering my questions and saving on domain for me. However, my suspicions were that IYD was just a domain-grift suck for domainers purchasing domains from the expiring auction houses, and IYD was “forgetting” to update their whois. I only retrieved one out of four domains I bought at Snap that that was submitted by IYD.
My only happy solution is to get reimbursed by IYD on losing the two or three domains, but is it worth my time to purse it?
@Stephen @9,
Like I said Stephen, we’ve been through this several times now via email.
I asked you for specific on your concerns. You said you lost TWO domains because of confusion in the IYD whois information.
I got idealdate.net for you at no cost to you as a goodwill gesture and you were very happy with the arrangement.
I can post the entire email thread here if you like but I’m thinking that Domain Name Wire doesn’t want us filling up their comment thread with our conversation.
Cheers,
Ken.
Yeah, i agree bro. It’s not important enough for me to follow up on. I was just curious as to how Tucows perceived how IYD obtained their domain portf that caused Tucows to purchase them. That’s a whole different story beyond my wimpy losses of a few domains worth a coupla hundred dollars.
Maybe I’ll follow up on the IYD situation on my successclick.com blog at some point, but now it seems moot. Tucows has IYD domains, the story is old… what can we domainers do other than ask for fair treatment from our registrars. If Tucows is on top of that, then more power to them… and I always believe in giving everyone a new start to correct wrongs from the past.
Peace
I hate Tucows, they parked all my expired domains and now want to exthort money from anyone who wants to buy them. They also would send out ‘Canadian Registrar’ invoices to renew any domains to people in Canada that registered domains from other registrars, thus trying to steal renewals. The Canadian Government eventually made them change the letter head on the invoice so it doesnt look like an official Canadian Government form.
http://www.cyberlogic.net/images/droc-g.gif
@ Dean – Tucows is unaffiliated with this scam.
@Andrew Allemann Ok, thought they were, as that is the registrar they used on the invoice I recieved. I noticed the newer invoices are not as decieving as in the past, due to a Supreme Court of Canada ruling.