Australia’s .au notes strong growth

Organization releases annual note for 2021-22 fiscal year.

Image of .au domain growth, showing 3.34 million domains under management and 51,300 fresh domain registrations per month

auDA, the organization that manages Australia’s .au country code domain name, issues its annual note today. It covers the period from July 2020 to June 2021.

During the year, the .au namespace increased 5% to 3.34 million domains. Fresh creates were over 50,000 per month, a 15% increase from the prior year. DNS queries per second jumped 131%. This isn’t surprising given increased online activity due to the pandemic.

Revenue shot up from $13.7 million in the prior fiscal year to $18.4 million in 2020-2021. Profit skyrocketed from $2.4 million to $10.9 million. auDA states much of this increase is due to accounting changes:

In addition to increased revenue as a result of COVID-19, change has resulted in the Group’s revenue recognised in financial year 2021 increasing compared with financial year 2020
as deferred income from the prior years has been brought to account in the current year. Recognised revenue from 2021 onwards will be more consistent in its quantum.

auDA ought to see revenue and profit gains from the rollout of second level .au domains this year.

The note also discloses the primary beneficiaries of auDA marketing funds. It paid $250,000 each to GoDaddy and CrazyDomains. CrazyDomains is an Australian registrar now owned by Newfold Digital.

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