Sedo’s domain parking business continues to drag on overall company. Sales of domains are down, too.
Sedo Holding released its Annual Report yesterday (pdf), and the numbers for the domain name business are fairly dismal.
Sedo Holding has two parts: domain marketing (Sedo) and affiliate marketing (affilinet).
First, the good news: Affilinet saw its revenue grow 17.7% year-over-year.
Now, the bad news: The bad news: Sales at Sedo in 2012 droped 17.9%.
Revenue from the domain marketing business totaled € 31.7 million in 2012 compared to € 38.6 million in 2011.
The decline in revenue can be attributed to the company’s domain parking business, which saw the number of parked domains on its platform fall from 4.4 million at the end of 2011 to 3.8 million at the end of last year.
The good news — at least for Sedo — is that the domain trading segment (i.e. name selling) saw slight sales revenue growth. The bad news for the overall domain market is that the revenue growth was due solely to higher commissions. Sedo’s domain sales actually dropped from $84.4M in 2011 to $68.2M in 2012.
In its annual report, Sedo says it sees the trend toward weaker results in the domain marketing business continuing in 2013. It is taking a number of steps, including “adjusting our existing structures”, to continue to run the business profitably.
Sedo’s market cap was cut in half in 2012, ending the year at € 41.7 million.
DM. says
Its not great reading but then its not really a surprise. We’re entering a challenging and interesting few years – hopefully see you on the other side!
Chris says
I think the decline of Sedo’s numbers isn’t necessarily reflective of the overall domain market but rather the fact that there are now many other viable alternatives for people selling domain names. DomainNameSales.com is a game changer and their model is taking people off of the Sedo platform. You can’t just be a net taker as Sedo has done for many years since they were far and away the leader in this space and not see competition begin to eat you alive. 600k less domains is a monster decline. They are going to have to adjust their revenue split if they want to get people back.
Makis.TV says
I wish this decline was mostly related to their bad value for money services towards domainers but I really dont think so.
Ivan H says
We removed 5000 plus domains from sedo (deleted) to another parking company with direct sales landers, each of the last 4 years we did 6 figure sales with sedo. Godaddy crosslink killed that relationship. I know many other donainers who did the same with quality names.
Ron says
What Chris said is dead on, losing all those names to other parking companies, and take into consideration those were some premium domains as well.
windy city says
…I remember that Sedo did a real number on the little guy with their 50 buck minimum fee, so a sixty dollar sale netted 10 bucks and sedo laughed at the seller picking 50 bucks outta their pockets.
Sedo was always complacent, it seems, and became even more so the last cupla years, so no surprise here.
The loss of business is Sedo’s fault in poor management. Changes have to be made and people have to get fired to get customers back. That is the way it works…
dnhow says
The Sedo-Godaddy partnership is frustrating. It lists the domains but holds them at auction. Most end users lack an auction membership. It’s confusing but Sedo is a great way to make sale. We’ll see what happens in the future.
whois.re says
how about for 2015? where best domain parking?