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.Com Winners: Some shakeup in the top 10

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Top 10 registrars juggle places in latest monthly report.

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

Note that HiChina is now listed as Alibaba in the official reports, so I’ve changed the name on this report.

Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations. There was a bit of shifting as Endurance had a good month and NameSilo dropped a bit.

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 920,365 (916,032 in July)
2. Alibaba (HiChina) 224,383 (237,296)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 200,563 (212,279)
4. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 153,130 (127,916)
5. Xin Net Technology Corporation 144,999 (129,492)
6. NameCheap Inc. 139,914 (124,011)
7. Web.com++ 103,022 (93,535)
8. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 95,841 (94,033)
9. NameSilo 86,955 (127,451)
10. 1&1 47,333 (not in top 10)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of August 2018. There were no changes, but I suspect that once we see the October or November report, Google will have surpassed GMO.

1. GoDaddy* 48,907,328 (48,659,723 in July)
2. Tucows** 12,816,784 (12,834,441)
3. Endurance+ 7,357,344 (7,411,874)
4. Web.com++ 6,722,545 (6,721,550)
5. Alibaba 5,813,977 (5,683,428)
6. Namecheap 4,354,411 (4,312,430)
7. 1&1 3,701,944 (3,716,477)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,376,346 (2,260,541)
9. GMO 1,993,491 (2,011,266)
10. Google 1,903,695 (1,840,869)

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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Namecheap and Tucows settle legal dispute

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Transfer dispute was resolved in a legal settlement.

Namecheap and Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) have entered into a settlement agreement to resolve a transfer dispute.

Namecheap, a former Enom reseller, sued Tucows (which now owns Enom) because it said that Tucows was dragging its feet over transferring millions of domain names to Namecheap. Tucows said it was just a matter of using the appropriate mechanism to transfer the domains.

Following a court order, Tucows transferred 2.65 million domains to Namecheap in January 2018. It then entered into a settlement agreement with Namecheap in September 2018, under which Namecheap agreed to pay an “administrative fee” to Tucows for services related to the transfer. Tucows transferred a further 0.24 million domains later that month. The company will transfer the remaining 0.4 million domains to Namecheap in the fourth quarter.

The net-net: Namecheap eventually got the names transferred the way it wanted and Tucows got at least some of the costs covered.

The settlement was disclosed in Tucows’ 10-Q filed with the SEC yesterday.

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Domain stocks hit hard in market

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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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