• 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

A strong month for .Com

by Andrew Allemann — July 2, 2019 Domain Registrars 0 Comments

A strong month for .com

Image of man running up column chart with words "Top 10 Registrars"

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com namespace. This registrar-by-registrar report covers March 2019.

March was a strong month for many registrars. GoDaddy topped 1 million new registrations and others had lots of new registrations, too. United-Domains fell off the monthly performance chart as GMO jumped on.

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

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 1,045,199 (884,685 in February)
2. Xin Net Technology Corporation 294,415 (123,707)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 206,170 (193,620)
4. NameCheap Inc. 160,737 (146,380)
5. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 138,627 (126,422)
6. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 135,927 (112,636)
7. Alibaba (HiChina) 126,659 (76,420)
8. NameSilo (CSE:URL) 95,985 (69,317)
9. GMO 89,155
10. Web.com++ 83,600 (83,164)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of March 2019.

1. GoDaddy* 50,831,723 (50,529,991 in February)
2. Tucows** 12,552,098  (12,554,559)
3. Endurance+ 7,065,847 (7,076,003)
4. Web.com++ 6,717,360
5. Alibaba 6,226,249 (6,193,225)
6. United Internet^ 5,630,889 (5,629,371)
7. Namecheap 4,694,598 (4,627,488)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 3,500,398 (3,272,339)
9. Google 2,361,414 (2,266,405)
10. GMO 2,007,437 (1,965,061)

Many domain companies have multiple accreditations and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.

* Includes GoDaddy, Wild West Domains and 123 Reg
** 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

  • Tweet
  • Email

0 Comments Tags: eigi, endurance, gddy, GoDaddy, googl, google, namecheap, tcx, Tucows

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

.Com slips at GoDaddy

by Andrew Allemann — April 11, 2019 Domain Registrars 8 Comments

Expirations outpaced new registrations at GoDaddy in December.

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

Something interesting happened in December: GoDaddy’s .com domains under management (DUMs) dropped. I’ve tracked monthly numbers for a long time and don’t recall this happening in recent history.

The drop isn’t due to a large outbound transfer. In fact, GoDaddy’s net transfer loss was less than 10,000. It’s just that more .com names expired at GoDaddy than it got in new registrations.

Note that this only includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains. It doesn’t include GoDaddy’s smaller registrars and the ones it picked up in the Host Europe Group acquisition.

Now, to the numbers. Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations.

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 824,821 (865,438 in November)
2. Xin Net Technology Corporation 207,506 (152,143)
3. Alibaba (HiChina) 169,910 (312,227)
4. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 155,809 (175,148)
5. NameCheap Inc. 129,114 (157,607)
6. Web.com++ 101,629 (97,702)
7. NameSilo (CSE:URL) 94,849 (130,713)
8. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 91,577 (123,087)
9. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 85,799 (88,236)
10. United Internet^ (FRA: UTDI) 60,004 (66,501)

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

1. GoDaddy* 49,354,689 (49,370,531 in November)
2. Tucows** 12,583,119 (12,659,835)
3. Endurance+ 7,124,825 (7,179,580)
4. Web.com++ 6,726,237 (6,732,478)
5. Alibaba 6,248,273 (6,192,801)
6. United Internet^ 5,640,149 (5,666,856)
7. Namecheap 4,535,855 (4,515,221)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,987,431 (2,792,514)
9. Google 2,106,955 (2,057,844)
10. GMO 1,953,479 (1,964,580)

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

  • Tweet
  • Email

8 Comments Tags: alibaba, eigi, gddy, GoDaddy, googl, namecheap, namesilo, tcx, Tucows

Big news: Enom switches from NameJet to GoDaddy for expired domains

by Andrew Allemann — April 8, 2019 Expired Domains 28 Comments

GoDaddy adds coveted Enom inventory to its expired domain name auctions.

Picture of expired parking meter.

Enom has moved its expired domain inventory to GoDaddy Auctions.

GoDaddy Auctions has another domain name registrar on its expired domain platform and this one is a doozy: Enom.

This morning I noticed many Enom domain names flowing through GoDaddy Auctions’ expiry stream.

The move is not surprising. Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX), which acquired Enom in 2017, already sends its non-Enom inventory to GoDaddy. For its Tucows domains, it essentially did a bake-off between GoDaddy Auctions and NameJet to figure out which one produced the most revenue. GoDaddy won.

The Enom acquisition came with a 50% ownership interest in NameJet and Tucows kept Enom’s expired domains on NameJet while sending its other domains to GoDaddy. But Tucows sold its stake in NameJet to Web.com late last year.

At the time of the acquisition I wrote:

The big question is if Enom domains will remain on NameJet and for how long. This was obviously part of the negotiation and ultimate purchase price. If Enom leaves the platform for GoDaddy at some point in the future, it will further degrade NameJet’s role in the marketplace.

We now have the answer.

So is this a win for domain investors? Yes and no.

On the plus side, they no longer have to manage domains at Enom. All domains they win will be added to their GoDaddy accounts.

Also, GoDaddy Auctions start at $12 (plus renewal, so about $20 total) whereas NameJet auctions start at $69.

But auctions at GoDaddy can be quite rich. Domain investors might end up paying more for domains there than if they same names ran through NameJet.

Also, I worry when there aren’t two strong competitors in a market. NameJet is getting weaker. Its valuable inventory is now mostly Web.com’s registrars Network Solutions and Register.com.

  • Tweet
  • Email

28 Comments Tags: eNom, godaddy auctions, NameJet, topstory, Tucows

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

Archives

Partners & Sponsors

HostingFacts.com



Top Stories

  • 01.

    Ethos paid $1.135 billion for .Org

    POSTED UNDER Policy & Law

  • 02.

    ISOC chapter breaks ranks, criticizes deal to sell .Org

    POSTED UNDER Policy & Law

  • 03.

    CBD company pays $160,000 for GreenRoads.com after losing UDRP

    POSTED UNDER Domain Sales

  • 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.