Domain Name News: “DOMAINfest Global 2012 Dates Announced by DomainSponsor” plus 4 more |
- DOMAINfest Global 2012 Dates Announced by DomainSponsor
- NCR wants to Keep BlockbusterExpress.com Domain Name
- Who Will Be The Big Winners and Losers of the New TLDs?
- Godaddy Auctions More Domains Than Sedo
- Web.com to Acquire Network Solutions
| DOMAINfest Global 2012 Dates Announced by DomainSponsor Posted: 11 Aug 2011 06:59 AM PDT DomainSponsor, the domain name monetization unit of Oversee.net and organizer of the DOMAINfest series of conferences, has announced it will return to the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica for their annual DOMAINfest Global event from January 31 to February 2, 2012. As in past years, the entire Fairmont Miramar Hotel has been reserved exclusively for DOMAINfest Global in order to provide attendees with an intimate, distraction-free environment that maximizes networking opportunities. Highlights from the February 2011 conference included a standing-room-only keynote address from legendary Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons, plus an entertaining fireside chat with Ben Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook. More than 700 domain name investors, online marketing professionals, and service providers from 30 countries attended the conference. A party at they event also made it into the main stream media through a mysterious illness that about 1/4 of the attendees. Registration for the event will opens September 1st with an early bird registration fee of $995, which includes all sessions, meals and official evening parties, will apply from September 1 through September 30. From October 1 through December 31 the standard discounted rate will be $1,195 per attendee. Beginning on January 1, the regular pre-conference rate of $1,295 will apply. Discounted hotel room rates at the Fairmont Miramar hotel are available. The company is also holding a New York Meet-Up event on August 23 from 7:00-10:00 p.m. at the Mad46 Rooftop Lounge, on the 19th floor of the Roosevelt Hotel at Madison Avenue and 46th Street. Attendees will enjoy speed networking, dinner and cocktails. Registration is $150 and is available online. Last year the NYC meeting was a “power networking day”, but for this year it has been transformed into an evening meeting, the price was lowered by $25.
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| NCR wants to Keep BlockbusterExpress.com Domain Name Posted: 08 Aug 2011 12:31 PM PDT As reported by Home Media Magazine, NCR has filed a motion that the BlockbusterExpress.com domain name is not to be included in litigation with Dish Network, the new owner of the Blockbuster brand as part of the Chapter 11 proceedings.
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| Who Will Be The Big Winners and Losers of the New TLDs? Posted: 05 Aug 2011 09:27 AM PDT We’d like to welcome Mark Jeftovic as a guest author. In the domaining world he’s known for stirring up some controversy in the past. Mark lives in Toronto, Canada with his wife and daughter, he’s the founder and president of easyDNS.com – the DNS hosting provider & domain name registrar, a libertarian and former Director to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA). When one looks at the track record of introducing new Top Level Domains it is perplexing to see where all the enthusiasm around unlimited new TLDs comes from. So far every attempt to roll one out owes it’s sustenance to purely defensive registrations (.biz, .info) or else it’s degraded into an utter fracas (.jobs) or just plain flopped (.pro) The latest TLD that isn’t a country code tarting itself up as a pseudo-generic is probably a good indicator of what to expect going forward: .xxx – reviled by the industry it extorts , err, purports to serve and first new TLD that we are seriously considering making a conscious decision not to “grab our name before somebody else does!”. I’m certain it won’t be the last. I believe one of the first things we will see as all this unfolds is a buyers strike in defensive regs. Once that happens everything will go sideways. So despite the near frenzied hype around these things, I have already gone on record to predict failure for the vast majority of them. The forthcoming onslaught of TLDs can be divided into roughly three categories: 1. Generics: these are where “the next .com”‘ TLDs will position themselves. Most will fail because there will be a buyers strike in defensive registrations and the speculators will get crushed. None of them will ever become “bigger than .com”, and I’ll be surprised if one ever catches up with .net. 2. Specifics: these are TLDs which exist for a reason (which I’ve been calling for), but that reason is just a thin premise based on naming. .jobs is a great example of this, because quite frankly, the premise was dumb. That companies would go out and register the .jobs version of their names to post job openings, as opposed to just adding /jobs onto their URL was weak from the outset. There are a lot of these in the pipe: .music, .eco, .money whatever – the ostensible reason for the existence of the TLD is to be the apex of some category vertical. What 3. Brands: this is where some entity with deep pockets sets its own TLD up to prove that “they’re serious” about their brand. So if Paul McCartney created .beatles and the only 4 domains under it were john, paul, george and ringo, it would be an example of a brand TLD. It would also provide zero value to the brand and probably even fail as call-to-action URLs as people habitually keep adding “.com” onto the end of everything when they type it into a browser location bar. Still, we cannot stand in the way of .progress, this evolution is inevitable, and I think necessary. This is who I think the big winners and bigger losers will be…because as per usual, the consensus projections for where this is all going are the outcomes that are likely precluded from occurring. See the losers and winners of the new TLDs after the jump. Let’s start with THE LOSERS Business Owners: people who run businesses on the web, or businesses with a web presence will be expected to pony up for non-refundable sunrise claims and landrush pre-orders, at jacked up prices and inflated Brand Owners: This hoopla around .brand is stupid. You probably don’t give a crap about your breakfast cereal’s twitter feed. You think it needs it’s own TLD? There are very few brands that make any sense as a Investors: As I’ve posited, most new TLDs will fail. Once the defensive-name buyers’ strike kicks in, most of the new TLDs will not even make it past that initial cashgrab phase which makes them look so lucrative. Couple that with an abysmal renewal cycle as the speculators realize that nobody wants to pony up xxx,xxx for “business.business”, and you have a recipe for epic value destruction. (Memo to VC’s: you can use this as a filter: anything you are pitched that contains a slide that says “and then we get our own TLD”, you can just move onto the Programmers / Network Engineers / Operators: Will find their jobs become ever more vexing once it becomes impossible to encapsulate the known universe of top-level namespaces and their syntax rules in a usable But it won’t be all bad news, these losers will have their gizards eaten by… The New TLD WINNERS: TLD & Registry Providers: When there’s a gold rush on, the people selling picks and shovels make out like bandits. Companies that enable and provide infrastructure to Top Level Domain operators will probably DNS Providers: At the end of the day, it’s all just names-to-numbers and for that you need DNS. To run a TLD you would need at least a modicum of global redundancy, preferably anycast deployed and able to withstand DOS attacks. Enter the DNS providers, because they’re the ones who have those capabilities. (Do I have to disclose that I run one at this point? I don’t expect a flood of new TLD applicants to be banging down my door to handle their rootzone DNS). Dispute Resolution Providers: will enjoy a booming business. As the buyers strike gathers steam, companies will find it is cheaper to “take out” an offending name in an unfashionable TLD than trying to defend Domain Litigation Lawyers: Not only will there be an endless selection of second-level squatters to sue, they can form class actions and snuff out entire registries deemed to have egregious disregard for the IP and finally, the single biggest, winningest winner of them all….. ICANN: They run the golden goose, they collect the $185,000 per successful application, they get to keep the non-refundable portion of the application fee from all the losers and then the $25,000 in annual Conclusion: I don’t know what that is yet, but those are the new TLDs that will succeed, while the rest crap out. Off the top of my head, something different, like maybe .gps, where domains under .gps actually represent GPS coordinates and thus real world locations; or .rfid where domains under that root would carry meta-data about RFID tagged items such as location or status. Who knows. But it will go far beyond that “yourname.bs”. Those new TLDs will be the signal, everything else will be noise.
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| Godaddy Auctions More Domains Than Sedo Posted: 04 Aug 2011 09:53 AM PDT Godaddy launched a domain name market analysis section on their site today which touts the claim that they are selling more domain names at auction than industry veteran Sedo.com. According to Godaddy :
The sheer volume of sales is likely due to the fact that Godaddy is one of the largest domain registrars that auctions off domain names that are expiring from it’s user base and Sedo is not. The comparison is a bit apples to oranges, yet the numbers are stunning. Namejet.com might be a better company to compare Godaddy with. Namejet auctions many registrar deletions at a starting price of $69 compared to Godaddy’s $10 starting price. It would be interesting to compare those numbers and we invite Namejet to jump in to this competition. :) The data on the site also shows some interesting numbers about the amount of domains that are sold Buy it Now, Offer/Counter-offer and Auction. Again, the numbers are likely skewed with the Auction numbers receiving more volume because of the deleting names that Godaddy auctions. The Buy Now number is the one that is impressive. It would be great to see these numbers made a little more granular to know how many of those auctions were deleting/expired domains vs actual sellers and how many of the Buy It Now were Premium Listing names sold from home page searches. The launch of this new section of the Godaddy site and the recent lowering of commissions seems to be a clear indicator that Godaddy is aggressively going after the domain aftermarket business. Kudos to Godaddy for sharing this data.
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| Web.com to Acquire Network Solutions Posted: 03 Aug 2011 01:17 PM PDT
Under the terms of the agreement, upon the closing Web.com will pay Network Solutions $405 million in cash and issue 18 million shares of Web.com common stock, in addition to refinancing existing net debt of Network Solutions and paying certain fees. Network Solutions is currently majority owned by General Atlantic LLC, a leading global growth equity firm. The transaction, which is subject to Web.com shareholder approval as well as customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions, is expected to be completed in the fall of 2011. Web.com bought Register.com a little over a year ago for $135M USD. As Elliot points out in his post about the acquisition, adding the domains for Register.com and Network Solutions brings the total count above today’s 3rd largest registrar, Tucows using the numbers at Webhosting.info. However that would not be counting their recent acquisition and the other registrars they manage. It also appears that web.com still holds a large number of domains in a Tucows reseller account. See the full press release after the jump.
JACKSONVILLE, FL and HERNDON, VA – August 3, 2011 – Web.com (Nasdaq: WWWW), a leading provider of internet services and online marketing solutions for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and privately-held Network Solutions, a leading provider of website services, online marketing and global domain name registration focused on the needs of SMBs, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement for Web.com to acquire Network Solutions. The transaction will create a leading end-to-end online solutions company with a clear path to $500 million in non-GAAP revenues as it focuses on providing web services to SMBs, a market estimated to be larger than $19 billion. Web.com believes its combined company will be positioned to deliver non-GAAP revenue growth in the low teens, with non-GAAP earnings per share and unlevered free cash flow growth in the mid-teens to 20 percent range over the next three to four years as revenue and cost synergies are realized. In particular, under current debt pricing terms, the transaction is expected to be at least 20 percent accretive to the $1.22 per share current First Call consensus estimate for 2012, with significantly greater accretion in 2013. Under the terms of the agreement, upon the closing Web.com will pay Network Solutions $405 million in cash and issue 18 million shares of Web.com common stock, in addition to refinancing existing net debt of Network Solutions and paying certain fees. Network Solutions is currently majority owned by General Atlantic LLC, a leading global growth equity firm. "This transaction represents a unique opportunity to dramatically expand our scale, add further momentum to Web.com's already improving top line growth, and further expand our market share as the nationally recognized go-to provider of online marketing solutions specifically tailored to small and medium-sized businesses," said David Brown, Chairman and CEO of Web.com. "Our integration strategy will be similar to our successful acquisition of Register.com, and we will be in a strong position to cross-sell and up-sell our services to Network Solutions' approximately two million retail customers and hundreds of thousands of wholesale customers. We believe this combination will provide significant long-term shareholder value as we grow our business, capitalize on synergies, improve our margins and generate substantial cash flow to invest greater resources in growth and branding initiatives." "The acquisition of Network Solutions immediately delivers enormous scale to Web.com and better enables us to capitalize on the significant shift from traditional marketing channels to online marketing as mass adoption by SMB's continues. Small and mid-sized businesses are increasingly looking to leverage the growing adoption of online local search, social media and mobile devices to grow, and they need cost-and time-efficient help. No other company has the combination of products, services and experience to help small and medium businesses as effectively as Web.com. Our combined organization will have far greater resources to market our end-to-end suite of solutions, in addition to using the power of a national brand for the first time in our history," Mr. Brown continued. Anton Levy, a Managing Director of global growth equity firm General Atlantic, the principal stakeholder in Network Solutions, said, "As growth investors, we are very excited to participate alongside other Web.com stockholders in its exciting strategy to be the web services and online marketing resource for SMBs. With this transaction, Web.com wins the race to scale, which is critically important at this moment in the shift to online marketing by small and medium-sized businesses." Tim Kelly, CEO of Network Solutions, stated, "Network Solutions has been a pioneer in this industry for nearly 30 years. We are very excited to combine our expertise, resources, customers and award winning customer service with Web.com. Our combined company will have tremendous know-how and a broad portfolio of online marketing, web services, social media and mobile solutions to help small businesses grow in the increasingly connected online world. For Network Solutions and Web.com, we will be positioned to capitalize on the more than $19 billion online services market for small and medium businesses in ways that neither company could do efficiently on a standalone basis." The transaction, which is subject to Web.com shareholder approval as well as customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions, is expected to be completed in the fall of 2011. At the close, General Atlantic and other current Network Solutions shareholders are expected to own approximately 37% of Web.com. In addition, as part of the acquisition agreement, Mr. Levy will join the Web.com board of directors.
Creates a market leader focused on small to mid-sized businesses In addition, as of June 30, 2011, the pro forma combined company has:
Both Web.com and Network Solutions utilize a high volume, multi-channel customer acquisition strategy that includes call centers, online and direct marketing, as well as distribution partners. Each markets a broad suite of solutions that include domain name services, web services, online marketing, eCommerce and other related solutions designed and delivered specifically for small and mid-sized businesses. With the infusion of Network Solutions' two million retail customers and hundreds of thousands of wholesale customers, Web.com will have a tremendous opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell its online marketing, Facebook, mobile and web services offerings. In addition, Web.com's current approximately one million subscribers will be offered a number of Network Solutions products and services that are complementary to Web.com's product suite. Enhanced Financial Profile With the Network Solutions acquisition, Web.com is creating an increasingly attractive financial profile, characterized by greater scale and growth, a recurring revenue model, improved free cash flow margins and increased profitability margins. Not only does the proforma combination reap the benefits of an immediate increase in scale, but Web.com also benefits from the customer profile of the Network Solutions customer base. A majority of Network Solutions' customers are on multi-year contracts with upfront payment terms, resulting in significant free cash flow and contributing to customer churn rates that have been in the 0.5% to 1.0% per month range. As a result, both unlevered free cash flow as well as adjusted EBITDA will be important metrics for evaluating the performance of the combined company. The combined company is expected to generate between $105 and 110 million in pro forma unlevered free cash flow and at least $120 million in pro forma adjusted EBITDA for the full year 2011 – before transaction costs as well as cost synergies. The combination of revenue growth and approximately $19 million in cost savings during the first full year of the combined organization is expected to contribute to $125 million to $130 million in unlevered free cash flow and more than $140 million in adjusted EBITDA for the combined company in 2012. In addition, the company expects to realize approximately $30 million in annualized cost savings by the end of 2013. The much greater profitability and unlevered free cash flow of the combined company, combined with significant cost savings and operational efficiencies, will enable Web.com to make high ROI investments in growth initiatives. In addition, for the first time in its history, Web.com will have the resources to invest in branding initiatives that it expects will have an important long-term impact on establishing Web.com as a leading provider of online marketing solutions to the small business community, acquiring new customers and expanding its sales accordingly. Web.com believes its combined company will be positioned to deliver non-GAAP revenue growth in the low teens, with non-GAAP EPS and unlevered free cash flow growth in the mid-teens to-20 percent range over the next three to four years as revenue and cost synergies are realized. Financing Summary After closing the acquisition, the combined company is expected to have net debt of approximately $740 million, which will represent approximately 5x net debt to 2012 adjusted EBITDA. The company's annual unlevered free cash flow is expected to be well in excess of its interest expense in the first year. As noted above, Web.com expects that the combined company will generate 2011 pro forma unlevered free cash flow of approximately $105 million to $110 million in 2011, before the effect of approximately $19 million in cost savings expected to be achieved in 2012 and more than $30 million in annualized cost savings by the end of 2013. Furthermore, the combined company's ability to leverage approximately $180 million in expected NOLs and over $50 million in expected annual tax deductible goodwill/intangibles amortization provides attractive tax characteristics which further support cash flow conversion and the rapid pay down of debt. Mr. Brown added, "Web.com has generated significant shareholder value following the Register.com acquisition, and we believe there is an even greater opportunity to do so following the acquisition of Network Solutions. We are highly confident that the strong cash flow capabilities of both companies, combined with the potential for over $30 million in annual cost savings, will enable Web.com to rapidly pay down our debt commitment and further increase investments in growth initiatives." Wells Fargo Securities, BofA Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan acted as financial advisors and Cooley LLP acted as legal counsel to Web.com Group. Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank acted as financial advisors and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP acted as legal counsel to Network Solutions. Lead arrangers and bookrunners for the debt financing are J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc. Conference Call About Web.com Note to Editors: Web.com is a registered trademark of Web.com Group, Inc. About Network Solutions Forward Looking Statements This press release includes certain “forward-looking statements” including, without limitation, statements regarding the proposed acquisition of Network Solutions and the combined company's forecasted financial results anticipated reach, capabilities and opportunities for the combined company, expected benefits to merchants and other customers, market opportunities, and expected customer base, that are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, plans, objectives, expectations and intentions and other statements contained in this presentation that are not historical facts. These statements are sometimes identified by words and phrases such as " "will," "projected," "continues," "may," "to be," "expected," "anticipated," enable," or words or phrases of similar meaning. As a result of the ultimate outcome of such risks and uncertainties, Web.com's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on Web.com's current beliefs or expectations, and there are a number of important factors that could cause the actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, whether the proposed acquisition is ultimately consummated, the ability to integrate Web.com and Network Solutions' businesses, disruption from the transaction making it more difficult to maintain relationships with customers, employees or suppliers; risks related to the successful offering of the combined company’s products and services; the risk that the anticipated benefits of the acquisition may not be realized; and other risks that may impact Web.com's and Network Solutions' businesses. Other risk factors are set forth under the caption, “Risk Factors,” in Web.com's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2011, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is available on a website maintained by the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov. Web.com and Network Solutions expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
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