Company missed its lowered guidance.
Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) released its Q4 and full-year 2022 earnings results yesterday after the market closed.
The company is generally good at pulling the right levers to hit its guidance for the .com/.net domain base. But this year’s comedown from the pandemic boom proved too much to overcome.
At the beginning of 2022, it expected the base to grow by 2.5% to 4.5%. It started reeling that in as the year progressed. By October 27, it said it expected a full-year .com/.net base increase of .25% to 1.0%.
Even with just a couple of months to go, Verisign missed its guidance. Over the course of 2022, the base increased by just 0.2%.
The company has set a wide range for next year. It is guiding to anywhere from 0.0% to 2.5% growth.
Even if the base doesn’t grow, Verisign’s revenue will, thanks to the 7% price hike it implemented in September 2022, and another 7% hike it will implement this coming September.
In another interesting note from Verisign’s results, it revealed that last year it made $19 million in revenue from running the .tv registry, but much of that was recognizing deferred revenue. GoDaddy Registry took this over in Q4 2022.
This is what happens when a company is put on a guaranteed contract. It is like another inefficient arm of the government.
Too bad the money isn’t going to the government so it could provide basic services that benefit regular people.
Instead, Verisign’s recent price hike and the others that preceded it are mostly going to the wealthy people like Warren Buffet, who owns 10%+ of Verisign.
Verisign’s dot com and dot net contracts generate almost a billion dollars of free cash flow a year (beyond any required research or investment). And it decided it needs more cash each year!
The domain industry – ICANN and other industry participants who don’t speak up – are letting this one company take all this profit out of the industry. One massive registry wins again and again while many millions of registrants lose.
Agree with @jeffery
A monopoly company with no competition and no transparency
When they want more money they just raise the cost of the dot com
Management is bloated, egoistical overcompensated
They should raise yet again the .COM/.NET registration/renewal fees. It will definitely increase their revenue.