OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Internet platform business and backend TLD provider CentralNic announced that it doubled its revenue in 2014, to £6.07mln from £3.05mln in 2013.
The group finished 2014 with 3 profitable operating divisions: registry services, registrar services and enterprise services.
CentralNic launched eight new generic TLDs, or gTLDs and ranked second by volume in the league table of new registry providers behind Donuts. But that is mostly true thanks to serving as the backend provider to the infamous .xyz New gTLD registry.
CentralNic also acquired the registrar internet.bs that is also contributing to the revenue.
Post year end, CentralNIc announced nine additional exclusive gTLD contracts for .site, .online, .tech, .fan, .love, .forum, .realty, .rent, .coop.
The May anniversary of the creation of the first batch of new top level domain name registrations executed on CentralNic’s platform is near, and the company is looking forward to renewals.
“A whole new revenue line is going to hit us,” Crawford said. “So far, we’ve not earned dollar one in renewal revenue, and the best thing is, we don’t have to work for this annuity revenue.”
“Donuts started a bit earlier than us so they’ve started going through the renewal process. They’ve had 50% renewal rates on some and 70% on others, so we’ll see,” Crawford said.
Maybe CentralNic does not need to work on getting renewals but the registries do. .Xyz is looking at sub-50% renewal rate.
“When Google, Apple, Microsoft, the BBC all launch, it is going to be an unavoidable reality when users switch on their PCs,” Crawford suggested, as he looked forward to a raising of awareness of the new TLDs that are available.
