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Endurance experiences Covid tailwinds as revenue grows

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Increase is businesses going online helps Endurance in second quarter.

Picture of stock chart with the words earnings report

Endurance International Group (NASDAQ: EIGI), a rollup of domain name, hosting and marketing services for small businesses, reported earnings this morning.

Its numbers were fairly strong in the second quarter as the company experienced a Covid boost like many of its peers that provide online services.

The company reported a slight uptick in revenue compared to the same quarter last year. Revenue came in at $274.0 million, which is up 1% year-over-year when you exclude revenue from SinglePlatform, a business it sold at the end of last year. While 1% isn’t a big jump, it’s a positive sign for a company that has mostly reported declining trends.

Bookings, adjusted EBITDA, and subscriber numbers were also up year-over-year.

Revenue for its Web Presence segment, which includes brands such as Domain.com and HostGator, was up slightly compared to both Q2 2019 and the first quarter of this year.

Endurance forecasts about $1.1 billion in revenue for the year, up slightly from last year when accounting for the SinglePlatform sale. Adjusted EBITDA guidance is about $300 million, down from $310 million last year excluding SinglePlatform.

Web.com scoops up Aussie domain business Webcentral for AUS $12.2 million

by — Domain Registrars 2 Comments

It’s the second Australian domain registrar acquisition in two years for Web.com.

Webcentral screenshot

Domain name company Web.com is acquiring Webcentral Group (ASX:WCG) for AUS $12.2 million.

Webcentral has about 330,000 customers and focuses on the Australian market. Web.com acquired another Australian domain company, Dreamscape Networks, for $73 million last year.

While WebCentral is not a household name, some of its brands are: Melbourne IT, Netregistry, and WME.

If you’re keeping score at home, this is the third acquisition involving pieces of what was once a dominant player in Melbourne IT. Tucows and CentralNic bought slices of its former reseller network.

Siris Capital owns Web.com. Its other key brands include Network Solutions and Register.com.

Before the surge: .Com in March

by — Domain Registrars 1 Comment

Registrars saw an uptick in new registrations in March, which turned into a flood in April.

The words "top 10 domain registrars" in purple and yellow text

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com namespace. This registrar-by-registrar report covers March 2020.

This data gives the first inkling of increased demand for domains thanks to Covid-19, but the real surge began in April as companies quickly moved their businesses online. We’ll get that data next month.

Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations in March:

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 990,805 (970,641 in February)
2. Namecheap Inc. 220,563 (203,248)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 201,660 (189,784)
4. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 167,966 (174,972)
5. Alibaba (HiChina) 168,265 (91,190)
6. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 144,355 (132,513)
7. Dynadot 105,006
8. Chengdu West 94,655 (61,674)
9. Wix (NASDAQ: WIX) 86,353 (75,407)
10. United Internet^ 71,767 (68,936)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations under management as of the end of March 2020.

1. GoDaddy* 52,559,293 (52,296,013 in February)
2. Tucows** 12,781,969 (12,791,432)
3. Web.com++ 7,119,532 (7,121,051)
4. Endurance+ 6,888,632 (6,851,967)
5. Alibaba 5,787,345 (5,747,031)
6. United Internet^ 5,521,784 (5,512,155)
7. Namecheap 5,551,106 (5,431,296)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 3,746,993 (3,961,980)
9. Google 3,367,072 (3,282,713)
10. GMO 2,313,794 (2,304,518)

Many domain companies have multiple accreditations and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.

* Includes GoDaddy, Wild West Domains and 123 Reg
** Includes Tucows, Enom, Ascio and EPAG
+ Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain and Bigrock. There are other Endurance registrars, but these are the biggest.
++ Includes Network Solutions, Register.com, and Crazy Domains/Dreamscape
^ Includes 1&1, PSI, Cronon, United-Domains, Arsys and world4you

GoDaddy files patent applicaton for “recommending domains from free text”

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Domain registrar wants to patent ways to suggest domains based on various non-search data.

Image from GoDaddy Patent application for patent search showing user interface

GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) has filed U.S. Patent and Trademark application number 16/235333 (pdf) for “recommending domains from free text”.

The application describes a way to generate domain name suggestions based on data and free text rather than a user searching for keywords.

From the application:

The disclosed embodiments automatically recommend domain names by making use of data provided by the users: 1) during creation, by the user, of a web hosting or other account; and/or 2) mining and making use of the relevant data within the content of files within the repository. The creation of a hosting account may include collecting user input from the user, using a graphical user interface (GUI) and one or more GUI components displayed on a client computer. This user input may include the user’s name, email address, physical address (including street address, city, county, state, country, etc.), username, title for the repository or collection of files (e.g., a website title), description of the repository or collection (e.g., a website description), any other sentence of notes associated with the repository, a business category associated with the user’s business, etc.

Once the user hosting account is established, the user may upload the files to the repository, or otherwise transfer the files through the network for storage. The disclosed system may then use the provided user input, and/or content within the provided files, to automatically identify the main concept from a collection of identified keyword within the rich amount of text contents, while eliminating other irrelevant concepts. These irrelevant concepts may include, as non-limiting examples, stop words, grammatically incorrect phrases, and terms or phrases common to all websites (e.g., “about us”).

Thus, the disclosed system determines how to generate meaningful domain name recommendations based on relevant concepts, which also remove irrelevant keywords or phrases, thereby providing one or more domain names that are shorter and easier for the user to remember.

GoDaddy has a number of domain search and discovery patents, including one that uses image data.

The application was filed on December 28, 2020 and the USPTO published it last week.

Namecheap revenue continues its surge in Q2

by — Domain Registrars 5 Comments

Year-over-year revenue grows 38% in Q2.

Picture of stock chart with the words earnings report

Domain name registrar Namecheap generated $49 million in revenue during Q2 2020, the company reported to Domain Name Wire. That’s up almost 38% over the same period last year and up 7.6% quarter-over-quarter. First-half revenue was $94.8 million, up $22.1 million, or 30%, over H1 2019.

The company had a net increase of 565,000 domains under management and now has 11.3 million DUMs.

Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall said he anticipates that the company will surpass 12 million domains under management in Q4 of this year.

During the second quarter, Namecheap added over 308,000 new customers, a 93% increase over the same period last year. Year-to-date, Namecheap has added 528,000 new customers, up 58% from the same period last year.

“In these uncertain times, we are proud to be able to continue to operate at full capacity, offering our industry leading 24/7 customer support, while being able to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our entire workforce, who all continue working from home,” said Kirkendall.

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