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.Com Winners & Losers

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The latest data about domain name registrars and .com domain names.

Image of man running up column chart with words "Top 10 Registrars"

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com namespace. This registrar-by-registrar report covers February 2019.

Starting this month, I’m including 123 Reg in GoDaddy’s numbers. This pushes its .com total to over 50 million.

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

1. GoDaddy.com* 884,685 (NYSE: GDDY)
2. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 193,620  (214,018)
3. NameCheap Inc. 146380 (160,061)
4. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 126422  (139,405)
5. Xin Net Technology Corporation 123,707 (217,462 in January)
6. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 112,636 (116,104)
7. Web.com++ 83,164 (108,996)
8. Alibaba (HiChina) 76,420 (97,945)
9. United Internet^ (FRA: UTDI) 70,794 (77,587 )
10. NameSilo (CSE:URL) 69,317 (72,182)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of February 2019.

1. GoDaddy* 50,529,991
2. Tucows** 12,554,559 (12,564,886 in January)
3. Endurance+ 7,076,003 (7,091,446)
4. Web.com++ 7,720,716 (6,727,908)
5. Alibaba 6,193,225 (6,208,947)
6. United Internet^ 5,629,371 (5,631,764 )
7. Namecheap 4,627,488 (4,592,302)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 3,272,339 (3,181,547 )
9. Google 2,266,405 (2,187,443)
10. GMO 1,965,061 (1,959,506 )

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 and Enom
+ Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain and Bigrock. There are other Endurance registrars, but these are the biggest.
++ Includes Network Solutions and Register.com
^ Includes 1&1, PSI, Cronon, United-Domains, Arsys and world4you

Tutorial: How to create a domain name suggestion tool

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Alvin Brown provides a tutorial on how to create a personalized domain name suggestion tool using GoDaddy’s API.

It’s been a while since my last tutorial spotlighting the use of GoDaddy’s API to retrieve a list of domains associated with your GoDaddy account.

Today’s tutorial aims to help create a simple tool that returns available domain names based on submitted keywords and domain ideas.

Domain Suggestion Tool using GoDaddy API [Read more…]

CentralNic buys rest of Melbourne IT’s reseller business for AUD $24 million

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CentralNic bulks up in Australia by acquiring carveout of what used to be Melbourne IT.

CentralNic logoDomain name company CentralNic (London AIM: CNIC) is acquiring TPP Wholesale from ARQ Group Limited (ASX: ARQ), formerly known as Melbourne IT. The company will pay total consideration of AUD $24 million (USD $16.6 million). CentralNic will pay AUD $21.3 million up front and the transaction is expected to close by the end of next month pending financing.

ARQ Group Limited sold the other part of its domain name and hosting reseller business to Tucows in 2016 for AUD $8.1 million. That transaction included 1.6 million domains under management.

CentralNic’s acquisition includes the rest of the domain and hosting reseller business, which is primarily Australian accounts. It includes 840,000 domains under management and about 14,000 resellers. The domains include 19% of all .com.au domains.

This business delivered AUD $17.0 million in revenue to ARQ last year and, by CentralNic’s accounting, had AUD $3.9 million adjusted EBITDA for the year.

The purchase price is therefore about 6x adjusted EBITDA.

Tucows paid about 4.5x-4.7x EBITDA for its 2016 acquisition.

CentralNic already has a big presence in Australia. It acquired local registrar Instra for AUD $33 million in 2015.

CentralNic is now positioning itself as a roll-up play in the domain business.

Tucows lost 20% of its value today

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Wall Street punishes company after disappointing Q1 results.

Picture of downward arrow and stock pricesDomain name, wireless and internet provider Tucows had a rough day.

Shares in the company plunged $17.30, or 20%, to $68.75. About $180 million of value was wiped out in one day.

The drop came after the company reported disappointing earnings after the market closed yesterday. Revenue slid in the company’s domain business and it faced headwinds with suppliers for its wireless service.

Long-term shareholders probably aren’t sweating too much. Today’s closing price is still above where shares traded a year ago.

Tucows is the second largest domain name registrar. It owns Tucows/OpenSRS, Enom, Ascio and other registrars.

Tucows takes a short term hit but CEO Noss is optimistic

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Company hits stumbling blocks in Q1.

Tucows logo

It is truly a quarter where it would be a lot easier to be private than public, but all of that makes me continually grateful for the nature of our investors.

That’s what Tucows CEO Elliot Noss had to say about his company’s first quarter 2019 results released yesterday.

Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) reported declining year-over-year numbers. Revenue was down 18% and net income fell 25%.

The results weren’t nearly as bad as the headline numbers. In Q1 2018 the company accelerated revenue recognization for domains it transferred to Namecheap. Take that out and the revenue number slipped just 3%.

That’s still the wrong direction and there were some hits during the quarter, but Noss says they’re just short-term. The company had setbacks on Ting Mobile and in the domain aftermarket. Expired domain revenue was lackluster.

But Noss points to the company’s long-term trends in fiber and fixing some carrier relationships for mobile as pointing in the right direction. The Ascio acquisition will also boost the company going forward.