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NameSilo acquires domain registrar and expired domain company NamePal

by — Domain Registrars 12 Comments

Deal will give NameSilo more tools to target domain investors.

NamePal’s Fetch is a domain backorder aggregation service.

Domain name registrar NameSilo (PINKSHEETS: NTCEF, URL:CSE) has acquired NamePal, a small domain name registrar with an expired domain backorder platform.

The all-equity deal is for up to a 1.75% interest in NameSilo, with the equity payments not starting until 6 months after completion of the acquisition. At today’s market cap, that’s only a few hundred thousand dollars. However, NameSilo is picking up NamePal’s team, so there might be employment agreements as part of the deal.

In a release, NameSilo touts NamePal’s Fetch! Product as a big reason for the acquisition. Fetch is a multi-platform backorder aggregator. According to a product page, Fetch allows you to place backorders on a central dashboard and manage your purchased domains through a central location as well:

Tired of using dozens of registrar platforms for your backorder domains? Multiple logins and different control panels can waste your time and cause delays that cost you money and customers. NamePal’s new Fetch! is here to solve your problems, our proprietary Backorder Platform will consolidate and make managing your backorders faster and convenient. Capture domains across multiple popular catch services, manage your remote domains and participate in auctions across the web, all in one location.

The page notes that the product is coming soon.

I can see value in a service like Fetch, especially if users can manage their purchased domains from one dashboard rather than logging into each registrar account.

A 2017 presentation explains NamePal’s plans to target domain investors with tools and services, including a domain “afterlife” program that lets domainers share in income received from a domain after it is sold to another user.

Arthur Poghosian founded NamePal. He also was CEO of BackorderZone.com, which he sold to Web.com in 2016.

The most recent domain data report at ICANN from September shows that NamePal.com has 26,000 .com domains under management at its main registrar, plus 40,000 at affiliate registrars that were likely set up for dropcatching.

The acquisition signals that NameSilo continues to beef up its domainer-targeted offerings.

 

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NameSilo hits $20 million in bookings for 2018

by — Domain Registrars 8 Comments

Domain registrar continues to show solid growth.

Namesilo domain registrar logoDomain name registrar NameSilo (PINKSHEETS: NTCEF, URL:CSE) is reporting that it had US $20.1 million in bookings during 2018. It defines bookings as cash received from new domain registrations, renewals and other services. Fourth quarter bookings were $5.4 million.

The registrar has been on a tear in recent years, especially after it was acquired last year. It is often among the top ten registrars in terms of new monthly .com domain registrations.

In a release, the company states that it added 420,000 domains under management (DUMs) last quarter across all top level domains. It says it’s the largest registrar for .ICU domains, so the DUMs are inflated a bit by inexpensive domains. But it had nearly 1.5 million .com domains as of the end of September, making it one of the top 15 domain name registrars overall for .com.

NameSilo reports that it has 240,000 customers.

 

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.Com Winners & Losers

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

How domain name registrars performed in the latest official report.

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

Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations.

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 868,031 (920,365 in August)
2. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 174,114 (200,563)
3. Xin Net Technology Corporation 170,284 (144,999)
4. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 143,179 (153,130)
5. NameCheap Inc. 139,581 (139,914)
6. Alibaba (HiChina) 133,156 (224,383)
7. Web.com++ 99,859 (103,022)
8. NameSilo 88,409 (86,955)
9. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 85,550 (95,841)
10. 1&1 44,580 (47,333)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of September 2018. Base on trends, I suspect Google overtook GMO in October 2018.

1. GoDaddy* 49,079,269 (48,907,328 in August)
2. Tucows** 12,751,782 (12,816,784)
3. Endurance+ 7,335,322 (7,357,344)
4. Web.com++ 6,722,165 (6,722,545)
5. Alibaba 5,852,659 (5,813,977)
6. Namecheap 4,405,568 (4,354,411)
7. 1&1 3,688,497 (3,701,944)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,522,185 (2,376,346)
9. GMO 1,979,668 (1,993,491)
10. Google 1,953,943(1,903,695)

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

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NameSilo doubles in size in just one year, crosses 2 million domains

by — Domain Registrars 3 Comments

Registrar that was acquired earlier this year is growing at a fast clip.

Domain name registrar NameSilo has doubled its domains under management in about a year, according to data published by the registrar. It now has 2 million domains under management (DUM).

The registrar hit one million domains on August 22, 2017. It has 2,004,656 as of the time of writing.

In addition to providing a total count, NameSilo breaks it down by top level domain name. This adds some credibility to the numbers, as it’s not stuffing cheap new top level domain names to grow its DUMs. Nearly 75% of its registrations are .com. .Net, .org and .info round out the top four.

Inexpensive domains fall in line after that but represent a small percentage of the domains.

Brisio Innovations, a Canadian investment firm, acquired NameSilo earlier this year for $9.5 million plus undisclosed earnouts.

(Hat tip: Adam Yamada-Hanff)

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Investment firm to acquire domain name registrar NameSilo

by — Domain Registrars 13 Comments

Registrar will likely end up as publicly traded firm after the acquisition.

NameSilo has been acquired for $9.5 million plus earnouts.

A Canadian investment firm has entered into an agreement to acquire domain name registrar NameSilo for $9.5 million plus undisclosed earnouts.

The acquirer, Brisio Innovations, is a publicly traded penny stock on the alternative Canadian Securities Exchange. It plans to spin NameSilo out as its own publicly traded company on a Canadian stock exchange after the transaction closes.

NameSilo had USD $11.1 million in annual recurring billings in 2017, up from $6.9 million in 2016. It has grown its domain names under management from approximately 745,000 domains at the beginning of 2017 to over 1.35 million today. The company boasts a customer retention rate of approximately 87%.

According to the most recent public Verisign filing with ICANN (dating to November), NameSilo had about 850,000 .com domains registered. It had close to 50,000 new .com registrations that month.

Unlike other recent acquisitions of domain name registrars, this one does not represent industry consolidation.

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