Recent Posts
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ICANN finished year $24 million ahead but loses $29 million on the markets
ICANN came out of fiscal 2022 $24 million ahead of its budget due to lower travel expenses and greater domain sales than expected, but blew $29 million on poor investments, according to financial results published today.
The Org ended June having received $150 million, mostly from registries and registrars, which was $5 million more than it had budgeted for.
Fixed, variable and transaction-based fees accounted for most of the difference. Registrars sold more domains than ICANN predicted, and fewer registries and registrars cancelled their contracts.
Verisign of course was the biggest contributor, accounting for over a third of revenue — $49 million for .com/.net fees alone. On the registrar side, GoDaddy contributed over $11.2 million.
GoDaddy’s contribution is actually a little higher than all the 131 participating ccTLDs’ voluntary donations combined, which came in at $11 million.
Expenses were $125 million, against a budget of $143 million. That was mostly due to the fact that two of its three meetings were held entirely online, so ICANN didn’t have to pay its staff and volunteers’ travel expenses.
It spent $3 million on meetings in the year, against a $10 million budget.
When the budget was passed in May 2021, ICANN had expected all three meetings to take place in person, with international travel “unrestricted” despite the pandemic.
Expenses were also affected by a lower-than-expected headcount. Average headcount was down by three on FY21 at 389, compared to the 405 predicted by the budget.
Despite the over-performance at the operating level, ICANN’s balance sheet actually declined compared to a year earlier.
It had funds under management of $505.5 million compared to $520 million, having lost $29 million due to “investment declines in the Reserve Fund due to volatility in the financial markets”. Its portfolio is still $9 million ahead compared to five years ago, however.
ICANN has a cash reserve of $500 million? For what does it need that much of an endowment? And a $125 million annual budget too?
If one can seriously consider “defunding the police,” it is certainly possible to contemplate defunding ICANN, isn’t it?
Why not start with reducing or eliminating the $.18 surcharge levied on individual domain registrations and renewals? There is probably plenty of room to reduce the burden on registries/registrars too.