Radix acquires another gTLD

Radix has added the 10th new gTLD to its portfolio with an acquisition last month, bringing its total TLD stable to 11.
The company has acquired .uno from Missouri-based Dot Latin LLC for an undisclosed amount.
.uno, which of course means “one” in Spanish, has been around for over five years but has struggled to grow.
It’s current ranked as the 131st largest new gTLD, with 16,271 domains in its zone file. It peaked at about 22,000 about three years ago.
That said, it appears to have rather strong renewals, at least by Radix standards, with no evidence of relying on discounts or throwaway one-year registrations for growth.
.uno names can currently be obtained for roughly $12 to $20 per year.
Radix said its expects to migrate the TLD off its current Neustar back-end onto long-time registry partner CentralNic by “early 2020”.
The company appears to be excited that its only the second three-letter TLD in its portfolio.
It already runs .fun, along with the likes of .website, .tech and .online. It also runs .pw, the repurposed ccTLD for Palau.
.uno was Dot Latin’s only gTLD, though affiliated entity Dot Registry LLC signed its ICANN registry agreement for .llp (for “Limited Liability Partnership”) in August. That TLD has yet to launch.

.blog registry handover did NOT go smoothly

The transition of .blog between registry back-end providers ended up taking six times longer than originally planned, due to “a series of unforeseen issues”.
Registry Knock Knock Whois There today told registrars that the move from Nominet to CentralNic took 18 hours to complete, far longer than the two to three hours anticipated.
An “unexpected database error” was blamed at one point for the delay, but KKWT said it is still conducting a post-mortem to figure out exactly what went wrong.
During the downtime, .blog registrations, renewals, transfers and general domain management at the registry level would not have been possible.
DNS resolution was not affected, so registrants of .blog domains would have been able to use their web sites and email as usual.
The migration, which covered roughly 200,000 domains, wrapped up at around 0800 UTC this morning. It seems engineers at the two back-end providers, both based in the UK, will have been working throughout the night to fix the issues.
KKWT reported the new CentralNIC EPP back-end functioning as expected but that several days of “post-migration clean-up” are to be expected.
Eighteen hours is more than the acceptable 14 hours of monthly downtime for EPP services under ICANN’s standard Registry Agreement, but below the 24 hours of weekly downtime at which emergency measures kick in.
CentralNic already handles very large TLDs, including .xyz, but I believe this is the largest incoming migration it’s handled to date.
KKWT is owned by Automattic, the same company as WordPress.com.

CentralNic to pay $3.4 million for iwantmyname

CentralNic has made yet another registrar acquisition, picking up New Zealand-based Ideegeo Group for the equivalent of $3.4 million.
The company said it will pay NZD 5.2 million, of which 10% is being deferred until May 2021.
Ideegeo runs the registrar iwantmyname.com. It’s not ICANN-accredited in its own right, rather it’s a reseller of Hexonet, which CentralNic has also acquired.
With 180,000 names under management, Ideegeo accounted for a little under 5% of Hexonet’s business in terms of domain names.
Ideegeo had revenue last year of NZD 6.2 million ($4.2 million) and EBITDA of NZD 0.9 million ($600,000), CentralNic said.
CentralNic indicated that the acquisition has enabled it to lock in that revenue, preventing iwantmyname switching to a different reseller network.
But it’s not just the DUM CentralNic is interested in. It also said it wants its user-friendly interface, which it intends to roll out across its other retail registrar web sites.
There are also up-sell opportunities, as iwantmyname currently sells only domain names and none of the usually associated accoutrements.
It’s CentralNic’s fifth acquisition in the last 12 months.
It still has plenty of money left over from a recent €50 million ($56 million) bond issue, so don’t expect it to be the last.

CentralNic boosts reseller biz with $11.3 million Hexonet buy

CentralNic is to acquire rival reseller-based registrar Hexonet for up to €10 million ($11.3 million), its fourth acquisition in the last 12 months.
Hexonet has over 3.8 million domains under management, according to CentralNic, sold either directly or via one of its over 1,000 resellers.
Hexonet’s primary ICANN accreditation, 1API.net, was responsible for roughly 760,000 gTLD domains at the last count, but appeared to be on the decline.
CentralNic said its reseller business will grow by about 28% in terms of domains due to the deal.
Hexonet had revenue last year of about €16.5 million ($19.4 million) and EBIDTDA of about €0.8 million ($0.9 million), and will immediately contribute to the bottom line, CentralNic said.
But it’s probably not great news for everyone — in order to receive the full €10 million Hexonet had to slash €300,000 from its budget.
CentralNic is paying €7 million in cash now, covered by the €50 million bond it recently issued, and will pay another €3 million in either cash or shares (its choice) on the one-year anniversary of the deal closing, expected this month.
Hexonet has offices in Canada and close to CentralNic’s recently acquired Germany operations.
Hexonet also acts as the de facto exclusive registrar for a handful of dot-brands, including .audi, .volskwagen and .bugatti, relationships that one imagines CentralNic’s registry back-end business could try to leverage.
In the last year, CentralNic has acquired KeyDrive, TPP Wholesale and GlobeHosting.

CentralNic grabs more of the reseller market with $16.5 million acquisition

CentralNic is living up to its self-described role as an industry “consolidator” with the acquisition of Australian domain wholesaler TPP Wholesale.
The company, assuming it manages to find the financial backing, will pay AUD 24 million ($16.5 million) for the business, currently a unit of ARQ Group (formerly known as Melbourne IT).
TPP has 14,000 resellers and 840,000 domains under management, including 19% of all .com.au registrations, according to CentralNic.
The company reckons the unit had revenue of AUD 17 million ($11.7 million) and EBITDA of AUD 3.9 million ($2.7 million) in 2018, which makes the purchase look like a bit of a bargain when compared to its acquisition of Instra a few years ago.

CentralNic gets 680,000 AlpNames domains for free, kinda

CentralNic has emerged as the gaining registrar for AlpNames’ entire portfolio of gTLD domains.
The company announced late last week that three registrars in its stable — Moniker, Key-Systems LLC and Key-Systems GmbH — will take over roughly 680,000 domains that were left stranded when AlpNames management went AWOL.
US-based Key-Systems LLC appears to be the biggest gainer. It will be taking over domains in every gTLD except .biz, .com, .info, .net, .org, which are going to Moniker, and .pro, which are going to the German Key-Systems division.
While most registrars see their domains under management concentrated in these legacy gTLDs, by volume AlpNames had far more registrations in new 2012-round gTLDs.
It had just 19,000 .com DUM at the last count, compared to hundreds of thousands in new gTLDs such as .top and .gdn.
CentralNic said in a press release that ICANN selected its registrars after a competitive bidding process, which I’ve previously outlined here, but that it did not pay for the names. So AlpNames, presumably, won’t be getting the payday it could have received under the rules.
The transfer won’t be entirely cost-free, of course. CentralNic is going to have to provide support to its incoming customers — who will all be emailed with the details of their new Moniker accounts — for starters.
There’s also the issue of abuse. AlpNames was notorious as a haven for spammers and the like, due to its cheap prices and bulk-registration tools, so CentralNic may find itself having to deal with this legacy.
But CentralNic said it expects these incidental costs to be “minimal”.
The transfers are a big boost for CentralNic’s registrar volume, at least in the short term. The three selected registrars had a combined total of roughly two million gTLD domains at the last count. CentralNic says it acts as registrar for over seven million domains across its 13 accreditations.
For every AlpNames domain that gets renewed, CentralNic gets paid. But if AlpNames’ own track record is any guide, I suspect there’s going to be a lot of drops over the coming year.
UPDATE August 12 2020: AlpNames former CEO Iain Roache recently wrote to DI and stated the following:

Alpnames itself worked closely with ICANN for months to arrange for its exit from the Registrar business and with a number of Registrars to arrange for the transfer of the customers. Your article does not reflect the detail of what transpired and is inaccurate.

Ironic eight-figure deal marks more Euro-registrar consolidation

Slovakian registrar WebSupport, which is run by a local politician, has been acquired in a reported eight-figure deal.
The acquirer is Loopia, a Swedish registrar backed by Danish private equity firm Axcel.
The deal seems to have closed around the same time as Loopia’s acquisition of .SE Direkt from Swedish registry IIS, though news only broke today.
WebSupport reportedly hosts around 173,000 domains, though it’s not clear whether it acts as registrar for all. It’s not ICANN-accredited, but it does resell domains in a wide range of gTLDs.
It reportedly has annual revenue approaching €4 million and sold for “a two-digit figure in millions of euros”.
According to Vladimir Vano, Slovakian comms chief at CentralNic, which acquired .sk registry SK-NIC last year, WebSupport is the largest .sk registrar.
There’s a certain irony with WebSupport being sold into foreign hands.
The co-founder and majority owner of the company is Michel Truban, an entrepreneur-turned-politician who was closely associated with a campaign to have UK-based CentralNic’s acquisition of .sk blocked.
It was alleged (and denied) at the time that the campaign was party-political, though its main concern appeared to be that CentralNic would bastardize .sk into some kind of horrible domain hack.
Today, Truban wrote on his blog “I’m selling WebSupport and I’m going into politics”. In 2017, he co-founded the liberal Progressive Slovakia party.
He said the money from the deal would free him from inappropriate influence by “oligarchs and patrons”.
Google Translate says Truban wrote: “I had an offer that was about a million euros higher, but I declined it. Because it was from people with bad history and at the same time I wanted WS to get an international story.”

CentralNic expects flat profit as revenue almost doubles

London-listed domain firm CentralNic today gave investors a sneak preview of its 2018 financial performance.
The company expects its profits at the adjusted EBITDA level to be up only slightly — from £6.6 million ($8.62 million) to £6.7 million ($8.75) — compared to 2017.
But revenue is expected to soar from £24.3 million ($31.7 million) to £42.5 million ($55.5 million), largely due to the impact of its merger with KeyDrive, which completed in August.
KeyDrive was the holding company for brands including the registrars Key-Systems, Moniker and BrandShelter, and the registry providers OpenRegistry and KSRegistry.
The Luxembourgish firm reversed into AIM-listed CentralNic in a deal, described as “transformative” for CentralNic, valued at up to $55 million.
Most of the company’s revenue now comes from the registrar part of the business, though the registry division is the more profitable.
CentralNic said today that “subscription products” are now roughly 90% of total revenue.
The company expects to save £1 million ($1.3 million) this year by migrating its old registrars over to the KeyDrive platform and migrating its new registries onto the CentralNic platform.
It has also appointed KeyDrive’s former CFO as CentralNic CFO, replacing Don Baladasan. Michael Riedl has also joined the board of directors, while Baladasan remains on the board as group managing director.
Full, audited financial results will be announced in May.

CentralNic buys .fans for peanuts

CentralNic has acquired the flailing new gTLD .fans for an undisclosed sum.
The value of the deal was low enough that publicly traded CentralNic was not obliged to disclose the purchase to the market, CEO Ben Crawford confirmed.
The ICANN contract seems to have changed hands — transferred to a CentralNic subsidiary call Fans TLD Ltd — back in August.
We revealed back in May that CentralNic was acting as a caretaker for .fans, and sister TLD .fan, after original registry Asiamix Digital failed to make enough money to keep the business going.
.fan, which Asiamix bought from Donuts but never launched, was sold back to Donuts in June.
Donuts took .fan to sunrise last week and plans to take it to general availability in December.
.fans domains, meanwhile, have been in registrar storefronts since 2015, but the current tally of registered domains is barely above 1,600.
Domains are still selling for around the $100 mark, roughly double the expected retail price of .fan.

CentralNic acquired yet another company

Acquisitive registry/registrar CentralNic has picked up another company, paying up to €2.56 million ($2.95 million) for a small Delaware-based registrar.
It will pay €1.5 million up-front for GlobeHosting, with the rest coming in two annual installments.
GlobeHosting may have a US corporate address, but it plays primarily in the Romanian and Brazilian markets.
It’s not ICANN-accredited. Instead, it acts as a Tucows reseller for gTLD domains (though I imagine that arrangement’s days are numbered).
The company had revenue of €849,000 for the 12 months to July 31 2018 and EBITDA of €419,000, CentralNic said.
The timing is arguably opportunistic. Earlier this year, Romanian registry ICI Bucharest (or ROtld) introduced an annual domain registration renewal fee for the first time (for real).
It recently started deleting names that do not pay the fee, a modest €6 per year.
CentralNic said that GlobeHosting, which appears to be notable player in the .ro market, is “expected to benefit” from this change.