Domain Holdings Q1 Report 2015: 75% .com, 3.13% New gTLDs (good or bad?)

Domain Holdings reported its Q1 results showing $4.75MM in total domain name sales. ($4,754,109) While most transactions are protected under confidentiality agreements, Domain Holdings can share the collective data to help investors understand trends, highlight interesting data points, and provide further insights into the domain industry.

Some of the Main Highlights of Q1 Include:

• $365,701 Average Weekly Sales
• $49,522 Average Domain Sale Unit Price
• 64.58% of ALL Sales End Users

One important and overlooked statistic is the fact that “Activity within the ccTLD and gTLD domains has reached new highs”. 3.13% of all sales were New gTLD domain names and although this seem like a small number it translates into almost $150,000 in sales.

Overall Sales Performance: Q1-2014 vs. Q1-2015

In Q1-2015, Domain Holdings managed to increase total sales, average weekly sales and average domain sales price per unit for the same period year over year. The total sales and average weekly sales both realized a growth rate of 40%, while our average domain sale price per unit grew 35% from $36,757 to $49,522. This average unit price represents the largest in company’s history.

Average Unit Sales Price

The below chart illustrates the stark increase in average unit sales price for the period of Q1-2015.

Buyers by Country

USA and China remain the largest two markets for Domain Holdings. In Q1, they saw a strong demand in numeric and letter domains from the Chinese market, particularly in the NL.com, LLN.com, and LN.com categories. Domain Holdings has also witnessed an increase in interest for .com brandable assets out of the Chinese investor markets.

In Q2, they are expecting to see an increase percentage and sales for China due to the recent increase demand for LLL.com assets.

Buyers by Extension

Since .com domains remain the strongest segment of the marketplace, they do not expect to see a decline in sales any time soon. Activity within the ccTLD and gTLD domains has reached new highs, most likely as a result of all the marketing efforts around the publicity of the new gTLD launches.  Demand for .net & .org assets continues at a steady pace.

Buyers by Extension

In similar fashion to our Q2-2014 report, brandable and 1 word .com domains continue to dominate our unit sales. In Q1-2015 we realized a 10% increase in brandable .com domain sales and a 5% increase in two word .com domain sales. One word .com domain transactions remain relatively stable. 75% of our brandable and one word generic .com buyers are end users, who may be more inclined to invest in their domain name and boost their brand equity.

End User Sales

As Domain Holdings continues to expand our breadth and depth in the domain aftermarket, they use metrics such as relationship type to quantify our success. Strong sales with existing relationships indicates we are servicing our clients at a high level, new relationships means we are securing new sellers and buyers and prospecting well. For Q1-2015, there is a healthy ratio between new vs. existing relationships. Another metric we are proud of is our ability to consistently building our relationships through inbound leads, and referrals.

Looking Ahead . . .

They expect to see some of the following predictions materialize through the remainder of 2015 and beyond:

• Domains in the LN and NL verticals will see a steady increase in value.
• Market for gTLD will grow and sales for aftermarket premium gTLDs will increase.
• New StartUp organizations, at Angel investment or Crowd-Funded level, will continue to gravitate to non-dot com extensions or a brandable company name for more favorable initial URL acquisition costs. Popular StartUp non-dot com extensions will continue to be .io, .co and .me.
• Revenue positive StartUps in later round funding will continue to upgrade their domains to the preferred .com extension and unify their digital brands.

Overall, Q1 was a great success and had an amazing start. They are expecting to have another solid quarter by increasing our sales through continued dedication to our existing clients (buy requests), secure more inventory, new relationship generation, maturing pipelines and new marketing campaigns. Domain holdings has expanded our team in size, function and experience in 2015 and looks to increase the head count and service offerings to help support the increased demands of our existing clients and new demands required by a client base that is growing weekly.