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UNR acquires .Trust and .LLP top level domains

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Company now runs 25 top level domains.

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Frank Schilling’s top level domain registry UNR has added two domain names to its stable: .Trust and .LLP.

This is the third home for .Trust, as Kevin Murphy reported last week. UNR says that MarkMonitor, CSC and Safenames are currently accepting pre-orders for .Trust domains.

The .LLP transaction was finalized in April, according to ICANN records. DotRegistry, LLC was the seller.

.LLP is a “corporate identifier” domain similar to .LLC and .Inc.

These domains have seen mixed results. .Ltd leads the pack with over 100,000 registrations. Over half of these are at Alibaba, and price seems to be a significant factor with first-year registrations at about $7. .Llc has 17,000 names in the zone. .Inc, which costs over $2,000 per year to register, has about 3,200 names in the zone.

Some corporate identifiers have restrictions, and my understanding is .LLP is currently set up to be restricted.

After divesting its share of .car, .cars and .auto, the two acquisitions bring UNR’s portfolio up to 25 names. There are 250,000 domains registered across its namespaces.

“Page experience” to impact Google search rankings starting in May

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Site owners have time to fine-tune their sites before it impacts search rankings.

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Google is adding three “core web vitals” as search signals starting in May.

Earlier this year, Google announced that so-called “page experience” would begin impacting search results at some point in the future. Today, it announced that the change will take place in May 2021.

A site’s load time, interactivity, and content stability as it loads will be used as a ranking signal. That means pages that annoy you by continually pushing content down as they load might show up lower in search results.

Website owners can look for Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console to find any issues with their site. They can then use Page Speed Insights and Lighthouse to fine-tune their sites. (Note those two tools use Google’s .dev domain.)

Google will also experiment with showing an indicator in search results when a page has a good experience.

Before you fret, keep in mind that page experience is just one of many signals Google uses to rank websites. Sites that aren’t mobile-friendly and don’t have an SSL certificate can still rank high in search results, despite these being used as search result signals.

Tucows announces Q3 2020 earnings

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Core business revenue up slightly, but headline number drops due to sale of mobile customer base.

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Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX), a domain name and communications company, announced earnings after the market closed today.

Q3 2020 revenue was $74.3 million. That’s down 16.3% from the same quarter last year but it’s difficult to compare. Tucows sold its mobile virtual network operator Ting during the quarter. That, combined with a $1.9 million bulk sale of domains in Q3 2019, accounted for the fall in revenue. Excluding the impact of those two items, revenue eked out a 2% gain.

The gross margin for the domains and Ting internet businesses, both of which Tucows retains, increased 10% year-over-year when excluding the portfolio sale.

New domain registrations in Tucows’ wholesale domains channel increased 30%, and in the retail channel increased 20%, a trend this year as more businesses move online due to the pandemic.

Net income was $0.7 million, down from $4.2 million. Excluding the impact of the Ting mobile sale, it would have been $3.4 million.

Tucows still owns a portfolio of surname domain names that it uses for its RealNames email service. It sells domains from this portfolio from time to time. It grossed $215,000 in sales of surname domains in Q3. Based on my understanding of the typical sales price, I suspect Tucows sold 4-5 domains.

How domain stocks are faring in 2020

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Endurance leads the way after acquisition.

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It’s been a wild ride in the stock market this year. On March 14, I wrote about how domain name stocks fared during the pandemic market crash up through the close on March 13. I wrote an update in May about how shares had rebounded with the market.

Fast forward to now: The NASDAQ is up 29% for the year, the S&P 500 up 7%, and the Dow is down 2%.

Domain stocks should probably be compared to the tech-heavy NASDAQ.

Here’s a look at how domain stocks have fared this year. Data is based on the closing price on December 31, 2019 and November 4, 2020.

Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN): Verisign is up 6% for the year, closing at $203.39 yesterday. The company is seeing a nice uptick in domain registrations as businesses move online during the pandemic. The market is likely also pricing in 7% annual price hikes for the next four years, with the first kicking in before October 2021.

Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX): Shares in the company that owns Enom have increased 23% this year. The market cheered when Tucows divested its lagging mobile phone business.

GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY): Before announcing earnings yesterday evening, shares were up 17% for the year.  The stock is getting hit today.

Endurance (NASDAQ: EIGI): An acquisition by Clearlake Capital values shares at $9.50 each. They’re currently trading at $9.36, nearly double their closing price on December 31, 2019.

CentralNic (London AIM: CNIC): CentralNic continues its acquisition binge, moving heavily into online advertising. Shares are down 15% for the year.

MMX (London AIM: MMX): An accounting scandal at this top level domain company has pushed shares lower in recent weeks. Shares are down 37% so far this year.

NameSilo (OTC: URLOF): Thinly traded NameSilo is having a rough year on the market. The OTC stock is off 55%.

Clarivate (NYSE: CCC): I didn’t include Clarivate in my analyses earlier this year because domains are just a small part of what it does (it owns MarkMonitor). But it has had a great year on the market; shares are up 80%!

I do not own individual shares in publicly-traded domain name companies to avoid a conflict of interest. Mutual funds I own, including index funds, do hold some of these stocks.

Speak the buyer’s language

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What matters to domain sellers doesn’t always matter — or even make sense — to domain buyers.

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Darpan Munjal, the founder of SquadHelp, provides a unique view on his Twitter feed into the domain name aftermarket. While most people who read Domain Name Wire are engrossed in the insider baseball of domain trading, Darpan has deep insight into what people selecting a new brand name are looking for. Here’s a great example:

Someone looking for a brand doesn’t care about the age of the domain. They don’t understand what you mean by CVCVC. They only care about getting a brand that resonates with their customers.

It’s reasonable to talk about domain age and the number of domain extensions a domain is taken in if you are negotiating on price. But pitching the domain as their next brand? Speak their language!

Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!