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M+M profits by losing new gTLD auctions
Kevin Murphy,
June 10, 2014, 13:10:27 (UTC),
Domain Registries
Minds + Machines managed to make a profit in 2013, after years of losses, due to its participation in private new gTLD auctions, some of which it “lost”.
The company today reported operating profit of £776,000 for the year to December 31, compared to a £3.07 million loss in 2012, on revenue of £4.12 million. Profit after tax was £729,000.
“Profit was primarily a result from participating three private auctions,” CEO Antony Van Couvering said in a statement.
Chairman Fred Krueger added:
As we expected, private auctions have become the key method of settling contention between applications and we have benefited from this development, as it has enabled our cash to work on a leveraged basis: the domains we have lost in private auction (for example .property and .website) have helped finance new TLDs we have acquired such as .wedding and .garden.
Minds + Machines (then Top Level Domain Holdings) said last October that it had raised £2.97 million by losing the auctions for .lawyer and .website.
Excluding the auctions, it looks like the company made just £36,000 in revenue, all of which came from its registry back-end business.
Easiest, fastest and most likely way to profit from newGTLD’s.
Pick names that are certain to go into contention sets, go to private auction, cash up and walk away. Oh, and convert the funds to gold bullion = real money.
Considering the years of delays in the new gTLD program, I wouldn’t call it fastest.
Well first i think some applicants put in names they thought would have success…it just so happens that more than one applicant thought that way.
I gather that most everyone putting in an application back 2012 did not envision a scenario whereby they would get money from a private auction process. If they did, good on them because this is clearly a profitable outcome
The results seem pretty good to me, my understanding is that for all bar the last 6 weeks of the period in question they weren’t set up as a revenue generating company so to show any profit is good going. The interesting one will be next years results now they are able to operate as both registry and registrar and won’t be relying purely on proceeds from auctions. I do like how the directors of M+M conduct their business.