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.Com slips at GoDaddy

by — Domain Registrars 8 Comments

Expirations outpaced new registrations at GoDaddy in December.

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com namespace. This registrar-by-registrar report covers December 2018.

Something interesting happened in December: GoDaddy’s .com domains under management (DUMs) dropped. I’ve tracked monthly numbers for a long time and don’t recall this happening in recent history.

The drop isn’t due to a large outbound transfer. In fact, GoDaddy’s net transfer loss was less than 10,000. It’s just that more .com names expired at GoDaddy than it got in new registrations.

Note that this only includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains. It doesn’t include GoDaddy’s smaller registrars and the ones it picked up in the Host Europe Group acquisition.

Now, to the numbers. Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations.

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 824,821 (865,438 in November)
2. Xin Net Technology Corporation 207,506 (152,143)
3. Alibaba (HiChina) 169,910 (312,227)
4. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 155,809 (175,148)
5. NameCheap Inc. 129,114 (157,607)
6. Web.com++ 101,629 (97,702)
7. NameSilo (CSE:URL) 94,849 (130,713)
8. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 91,577 (123,087)
9. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 85,799 (88,236)
10. United Internet^ (FRA: UTDI) 60,004 (66,501)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of November 2018.

1. GoDaddy* 49,354,689 (49,370,531 in October)
2. Tucows** 12,583,119 (12,659,835)
3. Endurance+ 7,124,825 (7,179,580)
4. Web.com++ 6,726,237 (6,732,478)
5. Alibaba 6,248,273 (6,192,801)
6. United Internet^ 5,640,149 (5,666,856)
7. Namecheap 4,535,855 (4,515,221)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,987,431 (2,792,514)
9. Google 2,106,955 (2,057,844)
10. GMO 1,953,479 (1,964,580)

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

* Includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains
** 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

.Com Winners: Some shakeup in the top 10

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Top 10 registrars juggle places in latest monthly report.

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com registry. This registrar-by-registrar report covers August 2018.

Note that HiChina is now listed as Alibaba in the official reports, so I’ve changed the name on this report.

Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations. There was a bit of shifting as Endurance had a good month and NameSilo dropped a bit.

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 920,365 (916,032 in July)
2. Alibaba (HiChina) 224,383 (237,296)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 200,563 (212,279)
4. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 153,130 (127,916)
5. Xin Net Technology Corporation 144,999 (129,492)
6. NameCheap Inc. 139,914 (124,011)
7. Web.com++ 103,022 (93,535)
8. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 95,841 (94,033)
9. NameSilo 86,955 (127,451)
10. 1&1 47,333 (not in top 10)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of August 2018. There were no changes, but I suspect that once we see the October or November report, Google will have surpassed GMO.

1. GoDaddy* 48,907,328 (48,659,723 in July)
2. Tucows** 12,816,784 (12,834,441)
3. Endurance+ 7,357,344 (7,411,874)
4. Web.com++ 6,722,545 (6,721,550)
5. Alibaba 5,813,977 (5,683,428)
6. Namecheap 4,354,411 (4,312,430)
7. 1&1 3,701,944 (3,716,477)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,376,346 (2,260,541)
9. GMO 1,993,491 (2,011,266)
10. Google 1,903,695 (1,840,869)

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

* Includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains
** 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

Domain stocks hit hard in market

by — Uncategorized 2 Comments

Domain name stocks haven’t been immune to the market rout.

It’s been a rough week in the stock market, especially yesterday and today. The NASDAQ shed 4.7% in the past two days.

There aren’t that many publicly traded domain companies anymore on the big exchanges, but here’s a look at how the remaining ones fared over the past two days:

Endurance International Group (NASDAQ:EIGI) -0.9%

GoDaddy (NYSE:GDDY) -3.9%

Tucows (NASDAQ:TCX) -3.9%

Verisign (NASDAQ:VRSN) -5.7%

Overall, the domain stocks did better than the markets as a whole. It’s worth noting that GoDaddy, Tucows and Verisign have had significant gains over the past couple of years.

Web.com officially went private this week. What timing!

 

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 International acquires Constant Contact for $1.1 billion

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

The acquisition machine continues.

Constant ContactEndurance International Group (NASDAQ: EIGI) has acquired email marketing company Constant Contact for $1.1 billion in an all-cash deal.

Shares in Constant Contact (NASDAQ: CTCT) closed Friday at $26.10, for a market cap of about $840 million. Endurance is paying $32.00 per share, and shares in Constant Contact have jumped in pre-market trading.

Endurance is paying for the acquisition with debt financing of up to $1.085 billion from Credit Suisse AG and an affiliate of Goldman Sachs.

Constant Contact has more than 650,000 customers, many of whom are good candidates to purchase other services from Endurance companies.

Endurance International Group is a rollup of hosting and domain name companies. It owns Domain.com, HostGator and BuyDomains.