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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!

 

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More companies should emulate Tucows’ new earnings call format

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Format leads to higher quality questions and answers.

Last month Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) held an unusual earnings conference call. Rather than a live call with analysts asking questions, the company pre-recorded the prepared remarks portion of the call. It then invited analysts and shareholders to submit questions in writing, to which Tucows would respond.

I wrote about the reasons for this last month. Now, I can unequivocally support this model. More companies should do it.

Take a look at the quality of both the questions and answers (pdf).

Noticeably absent are questions with answers already in the financials that analysts just needed a few more minutes to locate.

I’m a bit baffled that no analysts asked about the domain business, but I suppose they view the upside in the Ting mobile and fiber business.

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Tucows changes the format of its quarterly earnings conference call, and it’s a great idea

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

New investor call model should be emulated.

Publicly traded companies release their earnings once a quarter. They follow it up with an analyst and shareholder call that goes something like this:

The CEO talks about what happened during the quarter. Then she hands it off to the CFO, who recaps the essential numbers. Then the call is turned over to Q&A with financial analysts who cover the stock.

The Q&A part is rarely interesting. Because most companies release their earnings within a short window, the analysts are switching between multiple calls. It’s common to hear “I just got off another earnings call, so apologies if someone already asked this, but…”

Their question is usually basic and yes, someone already asked it.

The questions are rarely insightful because analysts have only just received the earnings data, and the answers are carefully worded to avoid screwing up.

In other words, these calls can be a big waste of time.

So I love what domain name company Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) decided to do starting with its Q2 results.

Instead of holding an earnings call, Tucows is publishing pre-recorded remarks from the CEO and CFO. Then it will open a seven-day question window for analysts and shareholders to submit questions. Management will publish answers in writing one week later.

I don’t think this will be any easier for Tucows. Analysts will have better questions and expect better answers than what they get on a conference call. But it will avoid the quarterly waste of time and be better for analysts, shareholders, and the media.

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Consensus be damned: here’s how transfers will work at Tucows after GDPR

by — Domain Registrars 7 Comments

Tucows will follow TechOps subcommittee recommendation for domain transfers as ICANN figures out what to do.

Here’s the thing about GDPR and domain name registrars/registries: if they wait for ICANN to figure out how to address GDPR, it will be too late to make the necessary changes to comply with the law. GDPR enforcement goes into effect in just 23 days.

One registrar that has been at the forefront of making changes to comply with GDPR (and has been stating them publicly) is Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX), which owns both Enom and OpenSRS. It is the second largest domain name registrar in the world behind GoDaddy.

The company recently posted about changes it will make to its domain name transfer process as a result of GDPR.

As I’ve written about before, if you can’t access a domain registrant’s email address, you can’t do a transfer under the current methodology mandated by ICANN. Click to continue reading…

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Tucows changes domain name price structure

by — Domain Registrars 20 Comments

New pricing structure draws ire of some customers.

Tucows (NASDAQ:TCX), owner of the dominant reseller domain name platforms Enom and OpenSRS, is introducing new pricing on both of its platforms. The pricing is not uniform across the brands.

The pricing structure looks somewhat like an airline mileage club, requiring a minimum annual spend and number of new transactions in order to get the best pricing.

For example, the top Platinum Plus plan on Enom requires an annual domain spend of $100,000 and 1,000 new registrations or inbound transfers. That plan offers $9.00 .com domains and $12.00 .biz, .info, .net and .org domains.

The baseline Enom account will now pay $13.50 for .com domain names and $17.00 for .biz, .info, .net and .org.

Pricing for other TLDs at Enom hasn’t been adjusted yet but that will change in the future, the company stated on its site. Click to continue reading…

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