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Domain names are one bright spot for Endurance

by — Domain Registrars 1 Comment

Revenue dips overall but domain business grows.

Endurance International Group (NASDAQ: EIGI) reported first quarter earnings before the bell this morning.

Revenue dropped year-over-year from $295.1 million in Q1 2017 to $291.4 million in Q1 of this year. Its subscriber base fell from 5.304 million to 5.011 million.

The rollup of hosting, domain and email marketing companies was hard hit in the web presence business. Its hosting companies, which include BlueHost and HostGator, lost 8% of their subscriber base over the past year. Revenue dropped from $164.0 million in Q1 2017 to $155.0 million in Q1 2018. Numbers were also down quarter-over-quarter.

Endurance has traditionally paid very large affiliate referral fees to keep its hosting business growing. It will be interesting to see if it changes this strategy.

While year-over-year email marketing revenue was up, it was down in Q1 compared to Q4 2017. Subscriber numbers also fell year-over-year, so the revenue bump came from higher revenue per subscriber.

The lone bright spot was the domain name business, which includes Domain.com, BuyDomains, ResellerClub and many smaller brands. Revenue ticked up $0.6 million in Q1 compared to Q1 last year, and $0.8 million compared to Q4 2017. Q1 is traditionally a strong quarter in the domain name business.

With all of its brands combined, Endurance is the third largest domain name registrar with about 12 million domains registered.

Endurance writes off $13.8 million in domain name value

by — Domain Sales 0 Comments

Company that acquired BuyDomains in 2014 just wrote off $13.8 million in domain value.

Endurance International Group has written off $13.8 million of value from domain names it acquired in 2014.

The company made the disclosure in its most recent quarterly filing with the SEC:

During the three and nine months ended September 30, 2017, the Company recognized an impairment charge of $13.8 million relating to certain domain name intangible assets acquired in 2014, which was recorded in cost of revenue in the consolidated statements of operations and comprehensive loss. The impairment resulted from diminished cash flows associated with this intangible asset.

While the SEC filing does not mention it by name, 2014 is when Endurance acquired BuyDomains for $44.9 million.

I reached out to Endurance’s investor relations department for clarification.

Remember Congo? It rebranded as LawBooth.com

by — Domain Sales 28 Comments

Company finds a good .com for under $3,000.

Congo changed its brand to Lawbooth.

Congo changed its brand to Lawbooth.

Remember Congo? The company that started its lawyer-match service at Congo.io, and then balked at the “egregiously overinflated” asking price of $750,000 for Congo.com?

Although I disagree about its characterization of the Congo.com asking price, I like the contest it proposed: find us a .com domain name we can buy for less than $3,000 to make our new brand.

When people say “all the good .com domains are taken,” they usually mean they can’t be hand-registered. The reality is that there are millions of existing .com domain names available for purchase for under $3,000.

Congo offered a $1,000 award in the contest. It claims it received 700 submissions (surely more than one from some of the submitters). In the end, it picked a domain it came up with itself: Lawbooth.com.

It bought the domain name for $1,780 from BuyDomains.

I think Lawbooth is a fine name for the company. Frankly, it’s better than Congo. (Especially since one of the alternative names the company registered was Con-go.com. Are the lawyers con-men?) The only problem* with the name is the logo, which makes you think the site is a dating site for lawyers.

* There might be another problem: there’s already a company with a registered trademark providing legal services under the name “The Law Booth”.

BuyDomains and the economics of large domain portfolios

by — Services 10 Comments

Should very large domain name portfolios be valued per domain or on sales and profitability metrics?

BuyDomainsThe sale of BuyDomains.com this week, including a portfolio of close to a million domains for something less than $80 per domain, has raised eyebrows.

On Tuesday, I wrote a bit about the BuyDomains’ business and how the valuation might make sense when viewed from a different perspective.

This post will go into a bit more depth, and compare BuyDomains to other domain portfolio business models. Click here to continue reading…

Why Endurance bought BuyDomains, and why the price might make sense

by — Domain Sales 14 Comments

BuyDomains is a natural fit for Endurance, and you need to look at more than price-per-domain to understand its value.

EnduranceEndurance International, a $2.1 billion (market cap) rollup of hosting and domain name companies, announced this morning that it acquired BuyDomains from NameMedia.

The tie-up makes sense for Endurance, which is generally considered the #2 domain name registrar in terms of domains under management. It will now be able to sell its massive customer base a premium, high-margin product. BuyDomains will also be another customer acquisition channel for Endurance’s web presence services.

“One thing we continue to do is look for opportunities for our customers to get online in a thoughtful way,” Endurance EVP Brian Unruh told Domain Name Wire today. “We’ve been attracted to the BuyDomains team and business [for awhile].”

The acquisition includes a portfolio of nearly one million domain names, the two BuyDomains storefronts (BuyDomains.com and DirectDomains.com) and associated intellectual property. The intellectual property is essentially the data and algorithms that BuyDomains uses to decide which domain names to register and acquire, and at what price. Click here to continue reading…