• Home
  • Categories
    • Domain Sales
    • Services
    • Domain Registrars
    • Domain Parking
    • Expired Domains
    • We Get It
    • Policy & Law
    • Uncategorized
    • Podcasts
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Disclosures
    • Facebook
    • RSS
    • Twitter
    • YouTube

Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News

Domain Name Industry News

Featured Domains

Tucows sends the cows out to pasture

by Andrew Allemann — October 7, 2019 Uncategorized 9 Comments

Company refreshes it brand and removes cows from its logo.

Tucows old logo on the left has two cow heads and the word tucows. The new logo on the right has just the word two cows

Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) has changed its branding, including a refreshed logo and website. The two cows that were prominent in Tucows’ old logo have been retired, although the stylized W gives a subtle nod to them.

The company’s name has always been a bit funny. It’s actually short for The Ultimate Collection Of Winsock Software, although the company has changed a lot since its origins.

It’s now the world’s second largest domain name registrar with its brands Enom, OpenSRS, Hover and EPAG. It also sells mobile phone service and broadband through its Ting brand.

The logo is only one part of a refresh that was long overdue. According to a video on the company’s website, prospective employees didn’t really understand what the company did by looking at its site. They also said the website made it look like Tucows was a company of tech people who weren’t tech savvy.

 

  • Tweet
  • Email

9 Comments Tags: NASDAQ:TCX, Tucows, tucows logo

Tucows offers “Whois Publicity” for domain names

by Andrew Allemann — July 30, 2019 Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Customers can now publish their information in Whois.

Graphic with the acronym GDPR for General Data Protection Regulation

Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) has started allowing customers on its Enom and OpenSRS platforms to display their information publicly in Whois—as long as their reseller enables it.

Called “Whois Publicity“, the new option allows registrants to include their registrant information in Whois. Whois will still not show Admin, Tech and Billing contacts even with the Whois Publicity option turned on.

The company masked Whois information for all “thin Whois” domains on its platform after the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation went into effect last year.

ICANN requires all registrars to allow customers to show their information in Whois, but few have enabled this option so far. That’s because ICANN added a loophole to this requirement:

7.2.1. As soon as commercially reasonable, Registrar MUST provide the opportunity for the Registered Name Holder to provide its Consent to publish the additional contact information outlined in Section 2.3 of Appendix A for the Registered Name Holder.

“Commercially reasonable” could mean one year, two, or more. Many registrars are probably waiting for the temporary specification in which this requirement exists to be made permanent.

(Hat tip: George Kirikos)

  • Tweet
  • Email

0 Comments Tags: eNom, gdpr, NASDAQ:TCX, opensrs, topstory, Tucows, whois

Stock market shrugs off short seller’s Tucows analysis

by Andrew Allemann — June 27, 2019 Domain Registrars 3 Comments

A short seller publishes critical analysis of Tucows.

Yesterday, a short seller posted a critical analysis of Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX). Shares in the company dropped before quickly recovering and ending the day in positive territory.

It’s not the first time a short seller has targeted Tucows with a report. But this one is more level-headed, avoiding the extreme hyperbole and anonymity of the prior report.

Kerrisdale Capital Management titled its report published on SeekingAlpha “Tucows: 3 Terrible Businesses In 1.”

Tucows’ three businesses are domain names, mobile service and fiber internet service.

I know the most about domain names, so let’s start there.

Domain Names

Kerrisdale writes:

Tucows’ Domains business is suffering similar stagnation. Industry-wide, growth is abysmal. GoDaddy (NYSE:GDDY) and VeriSign (NASDAQ:VRSN) have been suffering low single-digit growth, while TCX’s own revenue CAGR has been 1% over the last 3 years as it’s been losing market share. The business is highly commoditized, with little to differentiate any individual firm other than price. TCX has been boosting prices to inflate growth metrics, but this will simply accelerate churn and share loss.

This is a reasonable assessment of the domain name market right now. Domains Under Management (DUM) metrics are just barely inching upward at large registrars. There’s some differentiation beyond price, but price is a critical factor. And Tucows did raise prices on domains, which will undoubtedly lead to some customer loss. How much? I’m not sure, but I suspect the domain business’ overall margin contribution will remain the same or better.

The author notes that another challenge on the margin side is potential wholesale .com price increases. Tucows has previously pointed out that the company earns basically the same amount on .com no matter what the wholesale price is. The registrar market is competitive and all registrars will pass the price increases on to customers.

Where Tucows (and some other registrars) might have exposure is if prices for .com get so dear that domain investors drop their marginal names.

Tucows isn’t the only reseller-model registrar facing industry-wide challenges, and the company has made smart acquisitions of its competitors in recent years.

Despite slow organic growth, domains deliver great free cash flow.

A significant milestone for the company will be rolling out a new backend platform for Enom and OpenSRS. Enom has some major issues, and this platform upgrade can’t come soon enough.

Mobile

Tucows did something smart when it realized the high-growth days of domain registration were coming to an end. It looked for other opportunities and expanded into mobile service as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO).

Called Ting Mobile, the original idea was to leverage Tucows’ reseller network and expertise to sell mobile service. That didn’t work out, but Tucows understood that one of its core strengths was missing in the mobile business: customer service. People hate their major-brand mobile companies, so Tucows doubled-down on a simplified pricing structure and great customer service in which someone actually picks up the phone when you call (imagine!).

As Kerrisdale points out, Ting is facing headwinds. It depends on the major carriers for the network and resells their service. A Sprint/T-Mobile combination could hurt.

When I look at the Ting Mobile model, a few things worry me. I draw parallels to the domain business.

Tucows depends on a small number of prominent mobile operators. It reminds me of when domain parkers relied on just Google and Yahoo for ads.

It also reminds me of the reseller domain business. As mentioned earlier, Tucows raised the prices it charges domain resellers. Some will leave, but there aren’t that many options for other reseller platforms these days. Tucows has gobbled many of them up. It might be hard for Tucows to negotiate better deals with the few remaining megacarriers, just like it can be difficult for domain resellers to negotiate better deals with the few remaining reseller platforms.

Fiber

Ting Internet makes big outlays to light up fiber and bring service to customers. It then recoups that over time through monthly internet service fees.

This is a long term business. The further out your projections, the harder it is to target. I also worry about how changes in wireless technology could change the fixed-line internet market.

Kerrisdale makes some comparisons that I don’t think are particularly helpful, though. For example, it uses cost numbers from Verizon. But Ting is cherry-picking its locales because of their economics. That makes a big difference in the numbers.

I think one of the commenters sums it up nicely:

The Ting Fiber business is likely going to decide how investors fare. You make a strong case for the risks. And those risks are real. It takes a huge investment of capital to put in place the infrastructure. That results in a business that can be very sensitive to the adoption rate. If adoption rates turn out to be below Ting’s expectations, and more in line with yours, will greatly harm long term returns. The profitability for each new marginal customer is large so if there are surprises on the upside the returns could be very large.

Final Thoughts

There are lots of things about Tucows’ business to like. Its domain business its fairly predictable and throws off cash.

Whether the mobile and fiber businesses ultimately deliver is an open question. The business is relatively easy to model, and everyone can plug in their assumptions to figure out what they think the company is worth.

Tucows’ share price has soared from $12.47 five years ago to almost $90 before pulling back this year. It closed yesterday at about $60.

I don’t know if it is fairly valued or not. But I do know that Tucows CEO Elliot Noss is all in. He has more than 100% of his net worth in the company’s stock; he has borrowed against his stock holdings to exercise options and cover his taxes on them. That’s a good sign for investors.

I do not hold shares in individual publicly-traded domain name companies.

  • Tweet
  • Email

3 Comments Tags: NASDAQ:TCX, short seller, Tucows

Tucows takes a short term hit but CEO Noss is optimistic

by Andrew Allemann — May 9, 2019 Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Company hits stumbling blocks in Q1.

Tucows logo

It is truly a quarter where it would be a lot easier to be private than public, but all of that makes me continually grateful for the nature of our investors.

That’s what Tucows CEO Elliot Noss had to say about his company’s first quarter 2019 results released yesterday.

Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) reported declining year-over-year numbers. Revenue was down 18% and net income fell 25%.

The results weren’t nearly as bad as the headline numbers. In Q1 2018 the company accelerated revenue recognization for domains it transferred to Namecheap. Take that out and the revenue number slipped just 3%.

That’s still the wrong direction and there were some hits during the quarter, but Noss says they’re just short-term. The company had setbacks on Ting Mobile and in the domain aftermarket. Expired domain revenue was lackluster.

But Noss points to the company’s long-term trends in fiber and fixing some carrier relationships for mobile as pointing in the right direction. The Ascio acquisition will also boost the company going forward.

  • Tweet
  • Email

0 Comments Tags: elliot noss, NASDAQ:TCX, topstory, Tucows

Tucows acquires Ascio as consolidation continues

by Andrew Allemann — March 19, 2019 Domain Registrars 5 Comments

Tucows acquires another reseller registrar.

Ascio domain name registrar logoTucows (NASDAQ: TCX) has acquired reseller registrar Ascio Technologies from CSC for $29.44 million.

Ascio has 1.8 million domains under management and 500 active resellers. Compared to Enom, which Tucows acquired two years ago, Ascio has fewer but bigger resellers.

By selling Ascio, CSC it focusing on its brand management registrar.

Ascio has a strong presence in Europe with a headquarters in Denmark and office in Germany. It’s also known for carrying lots of country code top level domains, which will help Tucows expand the number of TLDs available.

According to the release, Ascio had approximately $4 million in annual EBITDA. Tucows had already included the Ascio contribution in the latest financial guidance it provided last month.

Tucows says it expects cost synergies in the deal and this makes sense. The company is already rebuilding its platform to run both Enom and OpenSRS, Tucows’ other reseller registrar.

 

  • Tweet
  • Email

5 Comments Tags: ascio, csc, NASDAQ:TCX, topstory, Tucows

Next Page »
Get the DNW Newsletter – sign up here.

Archives

Partners & Sponsors

HostingFacts.com



Top Stories

  • 01.

    Rolf Larsen acquires Desktop.com domain name for his next venture

    POSTED UNDER Domain Sales

  • 02.

    Non-Commercial users ask for three changes to .Org contract

    POSTED UNDER Policy & Law

  • 03.

    Should GoDaddy acquire .Org?

    POSTED UNDER Domain Registrars

  • Privacy Policy & Terms of Service
  • Disclosures
  • Advertising
© 2005–2019 Domain Name Wire • DNW and Domain Name Wire are trademarks of Brainstorm Labs, LLC

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.