TLDH releases annual report and earnings.
Top Level Domain Holdings, the only publicly traded pure-play top level domain applicant, today released its annual report and audited financials for the fourteen month period ending December 2012 (pdf).
The company ended 2012 with £2.418 million in cash and cash equivalents on its books. That’s down from £7.074 million at the end of 2011.
That’s not a lot of cash with which to fight over contested strings, but the company is working through that. It just entered into an agreement with Frank Schilling’s Uniregistry to run .country, which means it settled that contention set without paying up. It also raised up to $15 million to pursue one particular (and unnamed) string. I suspect it will enter into more partnerships and raise money in a similar fashion as the resolution of contention sets continues.
The company generated £0.42 in revenue from its registry back end consulting services. It predicts that its first top level domains will go online in the middle of 2013, which will finally start generating meaningful revenue for the company and its shareholders after many years of waiting.
The report also outlines a number of the company’s joint ventures, including its 50% interest in join ventures Rugby Domains Ltd, Basketball Domains Ltd, and Entertainment
Names.
Looks like they are BURNING through cash… with little to show for it?
.country, really?
Who is going to register anything .country?
TobyKeith.country, Nashville.country, mp3.country…
Rob
Country Music fans
Rock, Pop & R&B all have a greater volume of sales, perhaps that’s offset by the sense of community in country… But it’s a bit of struggle to see how .country gets a critical mass of genuine usage
a) Most artists who want a website have one
b) Most fans want to buy records not domains
c) Sure some domainers will want nashville.country but that just adds cost
d) With .com .info .us .music there’s a lot of alternatives
e) People often have more than one interest so it would seem unlikely they would want to register a .country, .eco, .horse, .home etc. domains
How many domains does a registry need to sell to break even?
I don’t know if .country has legs, but I can use the argument against just about any top level domains.
.music may be better, but there’s also a lot of competition for it. I suspect both TLDH and Uniregistry considered how much competition they’d likely get for these names when they applied. I know Demand Media did that. They considered how much money they could make from a domain and compared that to how many competitors they thought there would be for the domain.
OK, so thats three names registered. But beyond that…?