GoDaddy Archives - Page 39 of 116

Excerpts from GoDaddy Q4 2019 Earnings Call

Elliot Silver

-

February 15, 2020

GoDaddy had its Fourth Quarter (2019) earnings call with investors last week. Q4 2019 was CEO Aman Bhutani’s first quarter with the company, and it was his first time participating on GoDaddy’s earnings call. AlphaStreet.com published the transcript from Thursday’s earnings call, and I think it might be of interest to domain investors, particularly those who invest in GDDY stock.

Of particular interest, I think, is the discussion about why GoDaddy acquired Uniregistry. In Aman’s prepared notes, he first brought up the acquisition of Uniregistry, sharing some insights about what GoDaddy customers will be impacted by the buy and how:

NamesCon Extended Auction Ends Today

Elliot Silver

-

February 14, 2020

1

The NamesCon extended auction will be ending today at GoDaddy Auctions. The extended auction is a mix of domain names that did not sell in the live auction and domain names that were not including in the live portion of the auction. It looks like there are several hundred domain names in the extended auction. In the live auction that took place during NamesCon, over $1.8 million worth of domain names were sold. You can have a look at the 2020 NamesCon auction results to see what sold.

From what I can see, here are the five highest priced domain names that have hit their reserve price and will sell:

GoDaddy: “Let your voice be heard”

Elliot Silver

-

February 12, 2020

15

GoDaddy sent a warning email to a group of its customers about the potential for price increases on .com domain names that were authorized by ICANN. A comment period is now underway for people to share their feedback about the proposed changes allowing Verisign to increase the wholesale price of .com domain names, and several domain registrars have proactively contacted their customers to encourage them to submit comments to ICANN about this.

My understanding is that GoDaddy sent the email below to its Premier Services customers. This group is primarily made up of domain investors, but there are other businesses with large domain name portfolios that are in this group of customers. Obviously, the businesses with the largest portfolios of .com domain names under management are those that will be impacted the most by price increases.

Speculating on the Uniregistry Acquisition Price

Elliot Silver

-

February 12, 2020

16

Since the news about GoDaddy buying Uniregistry broke yesterday, there has been a lot of speculation and discussion about the purchase price. Although the price doesn’t really matter all that much to anyone beyond any Uniregistry stakeholders (like Frank Schilling) and GoDaddy shareholders, of course it is natural for people in the domain space to want to know how much was paid to buy the assets. I would love to know how much value Frank built over the last couple of decades in the business.

GoDaddy’s Brandsight Acquisition is Notable

GoDaddy

-

February 11, 2020

4

Earlier this morning, GoDaddy announced that the company will acquire Uniregistry, in a deal expected to close in the second quarter of this year. This is obviously huge news for domain investors for a variety of reasons. What might get lost in the domain investment space is the news that GoDaddy is also going to be acquiring Brandsight, a corporate domain name management and consulting firm. I also think this is an important acquisition for GoDaddy.

GoDaddy to Acquire Uniregistry + Name Administration

Elliot Silver

-

February 11, 2020

58

GoDaddy announced a major corporate acquisition in a press release this morning. GoDaddy will be acquiring Uniregistry, the company founded and operated by Frank Schilling. Uniregistry operates a Cayman-based domain name registrar and domain name brokerage platform. GoDaddy is also acquiring Name Administration, a related entity, which owns a portfolio of more than 350,000 domain names. GoDaddy is not acquiring Uniregistry’s domain registry, which operates 26 new gTLD extensions.