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Verisign has another strong quarter, raises guidance

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.Com domain registrations continue to outpace prior years.

A chart showing continued growth of .com and .net

Verisign continued to grow its domain base in Q2. Chart from Verisign investor presentation.

Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) reported second quarter 2021 earnings after the market closed today.

The company reported another robust quarter, with 11.7 million new .com and .net domains registered in Q2. That compares to 11.1 million in the same quarter last year. Verisign ended the quarter with 170.6 million .com and .net domain name registrations in the domain name base, a 5.2% increase from the end of the second quarter of 2020, and a net increase of 2.59 million during the second quarter of 2021.

Reported revenue was $329 million, up 4.8% from the same quarter in 2020.

Revenue will start growing faster in Q3 as Verisign increases the wholesale cost of .com domains by 7% on September 1. The impact will aggregate over time and boost the company’s already stellar operating margin of about 65%.

The company boosted annual guidance for revenue and domain base growth based on the results and its forecast for the remainder of the year.

CentralNic reports 16% organic growth in Q1

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Company reports organic growth in all three of its business segments.

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CentralNic (London AIM: CNIC) reported earnings for Q1 today.

The company said its organic revenue grew 16% compared to Q1 2020. It said that all three of its business segments grew organically year over year.

With acquisitions, revenue grew 48% to $84.4 million and gross profit increased by 58% to $27.9 million. The company’s adjusted EBITDA number increased by 23% to $10.1 million.

The company expects full-year numbers to be in line with market expectations.

CentralNic is renaming its monetization segment “Online Marketing” because the company added multiple ad businesses last year. It said that none of its marketing platforms use third-party cookies or collect personal data on customers, so it expects them to do well as Chrome blocks third-party cookies and Apple institutes its new privacy controls.

MMX reports 2020 results

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Most numbers flat to down slightly as company prepares to sell its assets to GoDaddy.

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Top level domain name company MMX (Minds + Machines, London AIM: MMX) reported its full results for 2020 yesterday.

The company reported revenue and profit that was more or less flat compared to 2019. Earnings per share was $.0033, or .33 cents (the report erroneously states it multiple times as $.33 per share).

Domains under management ended the year at 1.99 million, down from 2.46 million in 2019.

MXM reports that domains under management will continue to slip in some top level domains as it pulls back promotions:

We discontinued several promotions that did not drive profitable renewal billings, resulting in a reduction of DUMs in .vip in Q4 and continuing into Q1 2021. Other promotion contracts were also not renewed and further reductions in DUMs is likely for .work as existing promotions complete their existing business cycle

On April 23, MMX released 800,000 domains at regular prices that were previously priced at premiums. This has driven $170,000 in new billings.

GoDaddy is acquiring the assets of MMX in a deal expected to close later this year.

CentralNic earnings show shift from domain registration company to ad company

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Ad revenue made up nearly half of CentralNic’s 2020 revenue.

Images of ParkingCrew ad landers

Advertising revenue , mostly from parked pages such as these, made up 46% of CentralNic’s revenue in 2020.

Domain name industry rollup CentralNic (London AIM: CNIC) reported unaudited financials for 2020 today. The results show a significant shift in how the company makes money.

CentralNic has three business segments:

Indirect – Revenue from the reseller registrar channel (e.g. Hexonet), registry services provider (e.g., providing the backend for .XYZ), and running the .sk country code.

Direct – Revenue is generated from sales to end consumers such as small businesses, i.e., retail.

Monetization – This includes domain parking from its Team Internet/Parking Crew acquisition, and more recently zero click and affiliate marketing company CodeWise.

Monetization accounted for just $1.875 million, or less than 2%, of revenue in 2019. It accounted for a whopping $112.073 million, or 46% of revenue in 2020. It was 39% of the company’s gross profit.

This was a good thing last year because domain monetization took off. The revenue per thousand (RPM) CentralNic received for parked domains was up 36%, primarily due to increased rates from Google. The company credits this increase to better traffic quality after pruning some clients and to the company’s SSL-page monetization. But I’ve heard that other parking companies also received sharp increases in RPM from Google last year, so at least part of the increase was not related to CentralNic itself.

The increased reliance on ad revenue means CentralNic might grow faster, although the revenue will not be as predictable and stable as domain registration revenue.

Overall, revenue at CentralNic was up 121% to $241.2 million last year. The company says that taking out acquisitions and a few other items, the company grew 9% organically last year.

Full results are available here.

Verisign reports earnings, 10.9 million new .com/.net registrations

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Versign reports earnings, including a strong quarter for new registrations.

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Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN), the domain name registry for .com and .net domain names, announced third quarter earnings after the market closed today.

Revenue was up 3.1% year-over-year to $318 million. The company’s topline generally moves slowly but should spike next year as it implements a 7% price hike on .com domain names.

Profit increased from $154 million in Q3 2019 to $171 million in Q3 2020, aided by a $24 million income tax benefit. This suggests that profit would have actually decreased without the tax benefit. It will be interesting to see the P&L when it’s published.

The quarter ended with 163.7 million .com and .net domain names under management, up 4% year-over-year, and up by 1.65 million domains quarter-over-quarter. 10.9 million new domains were registered in .com and .net during the quarter. That’s a million more than were registered in Q3 2019.

The total base of .com domain names eclipsed 150 million last month.

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