Team Internet spends $41 million on content farm

Team Internet is back in acquisition mode, saying this morning it has picked up an Israeli content farm business for $41.8 million.

It’s bought Shinez IO, based in Tel Aviv and Denver, for the initial sum plus a potential extra $12.3 million if the company meets certain financial targets over the next two years, the company said.

Shinez operates a network of lightweight blogs covering areas such as food and fashion, which are marketed via social media and monetized via multiple ad networks.

It’s a lucrative business — Team Internet says Shinez had revenue of $111 million, $17.2 million in net revenue, and $10.4 million of EBITDA in 2023.

The acquisition edges Team Internet, formerly CentralNic, ever closer to becoming a billion-dollar company. It now expects revenue for 2023 to work out at $948 million.

The deal also seems to mean reduced exposure to Google as the company’s number one ad revenue source. Team Internet said “this acquisition would more than double the Online Marketing segment’s revenue generated independently of our Tier 1 channel partner”.

Team Internet says revenue beat estimates

Team Internet gave a preview of its 2023 earnings report this morning, saying that revenue grew faster than its own targets and analysts’ estimates.

The company, formerly CentraNic, expects to post revenue around $835 million, up 15% on 2022, and profit up 12% at $96 million for the year.

The firm’s Online Presence segment, which includes the domains business, had revenue up 16% at $179 million, while the far larger Online Marketing segment saw revenue up 14% at $656 million.

Team Internet will report its full results on March 18.

CentralNic rebrands as Team Internet

Another well-known domain industry firm has rebranded itself around a forgettable, search-resistant company name.

CentralNic is now Team Internet, though it will continue to use “CentralNic” in its domains business.

The company has changed its primary domain from centralnic.com to teaminternet.com (a redirect is already in place) and its AIM ticker symbol from CNIC to TIG.

The brand comes from Team Internet the parking company, which CentralNic acquired for $48 million in 2019.

The change makes sense — CentralNic doesn’t even make a quarter of its revenue from domains any more. Today, most of its money comes from social media marketing arbitrage and domain monetization.

Even if it were still laser-focused on domains, the registrar side of the business is bigger and “Nic” doesn’t make much sense there.

The company started off selling third-level domains in pseudo-gTLDs such as uk.com and gb.com, before enthusiastically embracing new gTLDs as a back-end provider and subsequently getting into the registrar game.

As its 10-year IPO anniversary approaches this month CEO Michael Riedl observed in a press release that the company has grown from a $4 million annual business in 2013 to a $728 million business last year.

Also of note, Gavin Brown, who was with the company since pretty much the start and held various C-level positions on the technical side of the house over the years, left the company last week to join ICANN.

CentralNic chief calls on industry to tackle climate change

CentralNic CEO Michael Riedl is calling on his counterparts at other large domain name registries and registrars to meet up to coordinate the industry’s response to climate change.

During a broad keynote at the London Domain Summit this morning, Riedl said that each domain company is too small to make an impact on the industry’s carbon footprint individually, and that coordination is needed.

He said the industry’s carbon footprint is currently “relatively reasonable” but said “we need to get it down to zero… together I’m pretty sure we can make an impact”.

Speaking to DI shortly after his speech, Riedl said he will soon invite industry leaders to a climate change “summit” in Hamburg, Germany, to coincide with ICANN’s 78th public meeting.

He said the domain industry needs to coordinate and standardize its approach to emissions, following the leads of other industries such as automotive.

He said he hoped he could get the CEOs of the big domain companies — he named Verisign and GoDaddy, who rarely send their CEOs to ICANN meetings — to show up.

Planning for the meeting is in the very early stages and Riedl said he has not spoken publicly about the initiative until today’s speech.

CentralNic starts returning cash to shareholders as revenue grows

CentralNic has started paying a dividend and has announced another share buyback as it focuses less on aggressive M&A and more on organic growth.

The company, which makes about a quarter of its revenue from domains, said it will spend £4 million of its cash reserves buying back shares between now and August and will pay a £0.01 dividend a month from now.

The news came as CentralNic confirmed its top line grew by 24% in the first quarter, to $194.9 million, driven largely by its traffic arbitrage business, which it calls Online Marketing.

Its revenue from Online Presence — domains and such — was up 14% at $45.2 million, and its number of domain-years processed was up 2% at 12.4 million. The company sells both as registry, registrar and back-end.

Overall, adjusted EBITDA was up 15% at $21.3 million.

CentralNic expects revenue up 24% in Q1

CentralNic has disclosed its earnings expectations for the first quarter, and revealed it has diversified its pool of advertising partners.

The company expects revenue for the three months to March 31 to come it up 24% at $194.9 million, with adjusted EBITDA up 15% at $21.3 million. Excluding acquisitions, year-on-year organic growth for the trailing twelve months will be about 45%.

CentralNic started off as a domain registry, acquired its way into the registrar space, and nowadays makes most of its money from traffic arbitrage — buying Facebook ads, routing visitors through intermediary web sites to advertisers.

Mostly of the money it makes from advertising comes from Google’s ad network, but the company said today it has also signed up to Microsoft’s rival Bing platform, which reduces its exposure to a single partner.

CentralNic will report its full earnings May 15.

CentralNic reports strong 2022

CentralNic grew faster than analysts’ expectations last year, the company said today.

The company expects to report EBITDA of “at least” $177 million, up 33%, on revenue up 77% at about $728 million, for 2022.

Factoring out acquisitions and currency fluctuations, organic growth is expected to be around 60%.

The growth has been driven by its domain monetization business, which CentralNic has been building through acquisitions over the last few years.

The company will report its results proper on February 27.

CentralNic buys a bunch of web sites for $5.2 million

CentralNic said yesterday has splashed out $5.2 million on what it calls “a portfolio of revenue generating niche websites”.

The announcement doesn’t specify any of the “multiple” sellers or the nature of the sites, other that to say it will add $1.2 million to the top line and $1.4 million of EBITDA in 2023.

The company was already responsible for monetizing some of the sites it has bought.

CentralNic hinted that it might be slowing down its long-running acquisition spree following the departure of 13-year veteran CEO Ben Crawford last week.

The company said “it is intended that in the future, the emphasis of cashflow generated will be a more balanced approach of returns to shareholders, deleverage and complementary bolt-on acquisitions.”

The newly announced deal was presumably in the advanced stages of closure at the time of Crawford’s departure.

Crawford QUITS as CentralNic CEO

Ben Crawford is leaving CentralNic, the domain registry/registrar that he has led for the last 13 years.

The company announced this morning that he is “retiring” from the board with immediate effect and that Michael Riedl will replace him as CEO.

“I have made the difficult decision to make my 14th year at CentralNic PLC my last, and to take retirement. I wish to thank everybody who played a role in the extraordinary success of the company,” Crawford said on Twitter.

I have made the difficult decision to make my 14th year at CentralNic PLC my last, and to take retirement. I wish to thank everybody who played a role in the extraordinary success of the company.

— Ben Crawford (@_BenCrawford_) December 12, 2022

Crawford oversaw the growth of the company, through countless acquisitions, from a provider of niche pseudo-TLDs into a leading back-end registry, registrar and, lately, domain monetization provider.

Riedl was CFO of KeyDrive before its acquisition by CentralNic and has held the role at CentralNic since 2019.

William “Billy” Green, financial director, will replace Riedl as CFO, the company said.

CentralNic said its business is “robust” and that it expects to deliver Q4 results at the top end of analysts’ expectations.

CentralNic gobbles up another registrar

CentralNic said it is to acquire California-based corporate domain registrar Intellectual Property Management Company for $7.6 million.

The company said the all-cash deal represents about 2.8x IPMC’s 2021 revenue and about seven times EBITDA.

CentralNic already plays in the corporate domain management space — it picked up BrandShelter when it merged with Key-Systems a few years ago.

But it’s the first acquisition in the domain space in a while. CentralNic is highly acquisitive, but recent buys have been mainly in the advertising and domain monetization space, which is driving huge growth.