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Tucows takes a short term hit but CEO Noss is optimistic

by — 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.

Tucows acquires Ascio as consolidation continues

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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.

 

New .Com Winners & Losers

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NameSilo jumps on monthly list.

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

The only notable movement was NameSilo, which jumped from #10 to #6 on the monthly report. It’s currently the 11th largest .com registrar. You can read an interview with NameSilo’s CEO here.

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

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 865,438 (893,103 in October)
2. Alibaba (HiChina) 312,227 (204,213)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 175,148 (183,542)
4. NameCheap Inc. 157,607 (139,033)
5. Xin Net Technology Corporation 152,143 (135,590)
6. NameSilo (CSE:URL) 130,713 (68,758)
7. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 123,087 (130,915)
8. Web.com++ 97,702 (105,815)
9. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 88,236 (92,312)
10. United Internet^ (FRA: UTDI) 66,501 (71,257)

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

1. GoDaddy* 49,370,531 (49,222,603 in October)
2. Tucows** 12,659,835 (12,709,575)
3. Endurance+ 7,179,580 (7,240,990)
4. Web.com++ 6,732,478 (6,730,384)
5. Alibaba 6,192,801 (5,972,559)
6. United Internet^ 5,666,856 (5,675,949)
7. Namecheap 4,515,221 (4,452,551)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,792,514 (2,639,761)
9. Google 2,057,844 (2,005,816)
10. GMO 1,964,580 (1,975,188)

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

Tucows sold $3.2 million of domains to GoDaddy (and more from earnings call)

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Tucows reveals portfolio sale price and data center plans.

Tucows logoDomain name, mobile and internet services company Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) released earnings for Q4 and full-year 2018 yesterday.

In its pre-recorded commentary about the earnings, the company disclosed that it generated about $3.2 million from a bulk sale of domains from its portfolio in Q4. Elliot Silver reported on this transaction with GoDaddy in December. The two companies completed a similar transaction in Q4 2017 but for only $2 million. The 2017 transaction was for approximately 10% of Tucows’ domain portfolio excluding surname domain names.

It will be interesting to see if Tucows does another Q4 transaction this year.

Tucows CEO Elliot Noss made a couple of other interesting comments during the call.

First, the company bought land in Centennial, Colorado to build a data center.

Second, Noss said he’s more concerned about a recession in 2019 than in over a decade. He made the comment in relation to how the company handles share buybacks:

Today, we again announced an open market buyback program that will commence immediately. The program will allow us to repurchase up to $40 million worth of our shares over the course of the next 12 months. This year, more than any year since 2007, I find myself concerned about a possible recession. That potential will inform our thinking in terms of the program.

The earnings release is here.

.Com Winners & Losers

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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