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MarkMonitor parent Clarivate reports earnings

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Acquisitions boost top line.

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Clarivate (NYSE: CCC), the parent company of brand protection domain name registrar MarkMonitor, reported Q3 earnings this morning.

The company reported stellar growth over the same period of 2019 thanks to two acquisitions.

Q3 revenue came in at $284.4 million, up 17.0% from Q3 of 2019.

But that includes revenue from Decision Resources Group, which Clarivate acquired at the end of February 2020, and Darts-ip, which it acquired in November 2019. And the comparison number omits the revenue from its divested MarkMonitor Brand Protection, Antipiracy, and Antifraud products, which are separate from the brand protection registrar.

Taking out the acquisitions paints a different picture.  Organic subscription revenues increased $7.1 million, or 3.5% on a constant currency basis, compared to the third quarter of 2019, but organic transactional revenues decreased $6.8 million, or 16.2% on a constant currency basis.

The company credits new business and price increases for the subscription revenue increase and blames Covid-19 for the transactional revenue drop.

Clarivate posted a net loss of $37.2 million for the quarter, which it attributes to higher amortization and acquisition-related costs.

Shares in Clarivate are down about 4% at 11 am EDT today, but investors might be forgiving: shares have doubled in price over the past year.

Is Wechat.com registrar migration a harbinger of things to come in the China domain market?

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Chinese companies might move their domains from the United States.

wechat logo shows two text clouds with eyes

Domaingang.com reported on September 24 that WeChat.com has recently moved from the USA-based registrar MarkMonitor to the China-based eName. This happened amid the worsening relationship between the USA and China.

Naturally, you may wonder whether it is just a single case or other Chinese companies are also following. So, I selected the top 20 companies from the “2019 Top 100 Chinese Internet Companies Report” and checked their Whois records. Here is the result.

Rank Company Domain Registrar Location
1 Alibaba Alibaba.com Alibaba Cloud China
2 Tencent (Teng Xun) Tencent.com MarkMonitor USA
3 Baidu Baidu.com MarkMonitor USA
4 Jing Dong JD.com MarkMonitor USA
5 Ant Financial Antfin.com Alibaba Cloud China
6 Wang Yi (Netease) Netease.com MarkMonitor USA
7 Meituan Meituan.com eName China
8 Toutiao Toutiao.com eName China
9 360 Total Security 360.com eName China
10 Xin Lang (Sina) Sina.com Xin Net China
11 Pinduoduo Pinduoduo.com 22net China
12 Sou Hu (Sohu) Sohu.com MarkMonitor USA
13 58.com 58.com eName China
14 Su Ning Suning.com eName China
15 Xiao Mi Mi.com Network Solutions USA
16 Xie Cheng (Ctrip) Ctrip.com eName China
17 Yong You (Yonyou) Yonyou.com Alibaba Cloud China
18 Cheetah Mobile CheetahMobile.com eName China
19 Autohome Autohome.com Alibaba Cloud China
20 Mango TV MGTV.com Alibaba Cloud China

70% of the domains are located in China and all of them have been there for quite a while. In other words, there is no recent migration of domains from the USA to China. You may notice that Alibaba Cloud and eName are the preferred Chinese registrars. (Note that Alibaba Cloud is known as Aliyun in China, which also owns HiChina.)

Although both Wechat.com and Tencent.com are owned by Tencent, the former has moved but not the latter. It’ll be interesting to see if Tencent.com will eventually move to China.

At this stage, the WeChat.com registrar migration does not signal any change to come. However, if Chinese registrants became worried about any sudden action by the US government, they would certainly move their domains back to China.

Although unlikely, in the extreme case, Chinese companies may be motivated or even ordered to use only .cn domains for operation inside China. If this happened, it would greatly dampen demand for .com domains because currently .com is still the preferred extension in China.

In this age of uncertainty, anything can happen, so it’s important to keep a close watch of the China domain market if you want to sell your domains there.

The most popular second level domains for dot-brands

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Home leads the way, but companies are also using them for hiring.

Chart showing most popular second level domains under .brands, including home, my, jobs, careers, and cloud

Home is the most popular second level domain under dot-brands. Chart courtesy MarkMonitor.

One of the nagging questions about dot-brand top level domains that match trademarks is what second level domains companies will use.

We all know that the home page for Fox is Fox.com. But if the company were to switch to .Fox, how would you access the site? www.fox? home.fox? go.fox? A second level domain is necessary.

It appears that most companies are choosing home as their primary second level domain for dot-brand top level domains.

MarkMonitor keeps tabs on all of the second level domains registered under dot-brand domains and found that 66 have registered home.brand. That’s the most popular second level domain. (That doesn’t mean that those companies are using it for their primary website.)

Looking at all registered second level domains, the other top popular domains are my, careers, jobs, and cloud. This gives some indication of how brands are using their top level domains, even if they haven’t switched over from .com or another extension.

Neustar, a registry services provider, uses home.neustar for its site.

You can download MarkMonitor’s most recent new TLD report, including more data on second level domains under .brands, here.

MarkMonitor parent Clarivate cuts costs and revenue guidance for Covid

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Company will slash costs this year to keep earnings on track.

Picture of stock chart with the words earnings report

Clarivate Analytics (NYSE: CCC), parent company of MarkMonitor’s domain name business, released earnings today.

Revenues were up 2.8% year-over-year for the first quarter of 2020, coming in at $240.6 million. The company had a net loss of $74.0 million but its Adjusted EBITDA number climbed 32.% year-over-year to $78.2 million. Adjusted net income was $25.5 million.

The company expects a revenue hit this year due to Covid-19 and is slashing costs to compensate. It has lowered its annual adjusted revenue guidance from $1.16 billion to $1.19 billion down to $1.13 billion to $1.16 billion.

It plans to cut costs $30 million this year due to Covid, on top of the $70-$75 million it cut in 2019. $5 million of the $30 million will be permanent savings. This should keep its adjusted measures on track to meet prior guidance.

Its guidance is predicated on the virus being brought under control by the end of Q2, a gradual lifting of restrictions/movement of labor in mid-to-late Q3, and a recovery starting in early Q4.

Part of MarkMonitor sold to OpSec Security

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Clarivate will retain the domain name business.

Logo for MarkMonitor

Clarivate Analytics (NYSE: CCC) is selling part of its MarkMonitor business to OpSec Security.

OpSec Security is an anticounterfeiting and brand protection company. It will acquire the MarkMonitor brand protection, antipiracy and antifraud business from Clarivate.

This does not include the MarkMonitor Domain Management business. Clarivate is re-organizing its business into two groups, one of which will cover intellectual property and will include MarkMonitor’s domain business.

The portion of MarkMonitor that Clarivate is retaining will still do brand protection as it relates to cybersquatting, trademark detection, etc. However, it will no longer do anticounterfeiting detection and mitigation, antipiracy, and antifraud.

Clarivate will retain the MarkMonitor brand.

The transaction is expected to close by the end of the yar.

 

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