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:
“And lastly, for our large customers, we just announced the acquisition of several business components from Uniregistry. We’ve acquired a set of world-class tools, experiences and technology to help our customers and domain investors buy and manage domains, a broker network to add capability to our aftermarket business of corporate registrar as well as a portfolio of high-quality names that will help us improve liquidity in the secondary market.”
Ygal Arounian, an Analyst with Wedbush Securities, asked about the Uniregistry acquisition and the impact it would have on the company. Ray Winborne, Chief Financial Officer of GoDaddy, shared the financial impact, and Aman Bhutani discussed the impact the acquisition would have on GoDaddy customers. Here’s an excerpt of Aman’s comments from the Alpha Street transcript:
“Yes. And in terms of the components of Uniregistry, the key pieces that are for the GoDaddy business now include a set of tools and experiences for our large customers. Second, there’s a set of sorry, there is a portfolio of names that is part of Uniregistry that is coming into the company as well. So if I just take those two items separately. When we look at our large customers, there is a set of friction for them to be able to do their jobs. It’s there’s a lot of off-line stuff. There’s a lot of sort of handholding and interaction in the broker service. And Uniregistry is built from the ground up tools and experiences for that cost. So bringing those back into the GoDaddy family and offering it to all of our large customers is a fantastic addition. In terms of the portfolio, it’s about 350,000 domains. It’s a fantastic portfolio. It allows us to continue to improve the liquidity of our secondary market and really offer those names up to all the people coming into GoDaddy.com and searching for a domain name.”
You should check out the full transcript to get a better picture of the company’s fourth quarter performance.
Let me flaunt my naivete. So Godaddy’s own portfolio is now 350,00 names fatter. If I try to register one of those names, I’m guessing that I would see “LLLLL.com is taken”, and to the right, the familiar, under “Domain Broker Service”, the invitation “We still might be able to get it for you.” This by reaching into Godaddys pocket. I’m pretty sure I get it but just wanted to be clear. The only real interest of this event would be to Frank and his peeps and Godaddy stockholders. My lingering question is “Did Godaddy actually purchace and transfer those Names to themselves, or is it that Godaddy is now the exclusive Broker of Uniregistry’s portfolio?” Or some other scenario maybe. Asking for a friend.
our plan with the Uni portfolio as with all our portfolio acquisitions will be to assign reasonable prices to these phenomonal names, and make them available broadly to everyday entrepreneurs and investors via Afternic DLS which includes GoDaddy and most of the world’s top registrars and hosting companies. This is a win for everyone.
A bit confused now, quite simply…did Frank sell a huge portfolio to Godaddy or not?