Non-recurring aftermarket business fell slightly in Q3.
GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) released Q3 earnings this afternoon, reporting a 7% year-over-year revenue increase to $1.15 billion.
The company’s Applications & Commerce segment grew 16% year over year, totaling $423.1 million. Core Platform, which includes legacy hosting and domains, increased 3% to $724.5 million.
Q3 was hurt by aftermarket revenue, which totaled $106 million in Q3. This was down from $112 million in Q2 of this year and $107 million in Q3 2023.
While the aftermarket performed well in Q2, it could be facing headwinds from losing Huge Domains’ inventory. I’ve also heard anecdotally from some domain investors that they’ve noticed that Huge Domains is not bidding as much in expired domain auctions.
GoDaddy is still forecasting record aftermarket revenue for the full year. It expects Applications & Commerce to continue growing in the mid-teens next quarter, and Core Platform should remain in the low single digits.
The company also said it’s benefiting from AI. On the revenue side, this comes from its Airo product. On the cost savings side, the company said its AI-powered chatbot saved 16 million minutes of customer service time, which it says did not sacrifice customer satisfaction.
7% is the YoY increase of wholesale registry fee on .com. So it could be just that.
While GoDaddy raises its domain discount club prices in line with Verisign increases (because otherwise it would be below cost), I don’t think they raised .com prices for the majority of their customers over the past year.
“which it says did not sacrifice customer satisfaction.”
Hahahahaha. They believe their own spin.
I hear you, but I think they might be right on this one. I’m sure they measured it. Have you tried any of the AI customer service chatbots? I’ve found that can actually be really good. I often get exactly the information I’m looking for and it’s faster than waiting for a human to respond on chat.
Admittedly I haven’t needed to as I try and steer clear of GD as much as possible. However, I did have cause to interact with a human CSO there the other day and the experience was very unsatisfactory. So I guess if that’s an indication of how things are, then indeed – perhaps the bots will give better satisfaction levels!