Neustar grossed regarding $2 million revenue from fresh TLDs in Q4
Firm is “cautiously bullish” regarding fresh TLDs over next few quarters, but I’m not the only one who doesn’t know what that means.
Domain name registry and telephone services firm Neustar (NYSE: NSR) noted 4th quarter 2014 earnings yesterday following the market closed.
On the firm’s conference call, CFO Paul Lalljie noted that the firm pulled in regarding $2 million in revenue in the fourth quarter from fresh top level domain names, and much of that came from the .NYC launch.
The firm had revenue of $252 million for the quarter, so fresh TLDs contributed regarding 8/10th of a percent to its top line.
Neustar CEO Lisa Hook cautioned that its contracts for fresh TLDs are not all variable, so tracking domains under management (DUM) might not correlate well to how much the firm generates from fresh TLDs. Some contracts are fixed price, some have a fixed price with additional services, and others are tied closely to domains under management.
I suspect that .NYC is one of the more favorable contracts Neustar has from a revenue perspective, given that it is responsible for the entire program counting marketing. It gets 60% of revenue from .NYC sales. For most domain names, it’s acting as just a technical services provider.
In an amusing comment, Lalljie stated that their Head of Investor Relations states that the firm is “cautiously bullish for the next few quarters as we think of these launches”, but Lalljie stated he doesn’t really know what that means. I guess it’s a CYA way of hoping for the best, but not having much confidence in it.
