Tucows on domain name aftermarket, SOPA, and fresh top level domains

Tucows has a banner year and discusses rising aftermarket domain sale prices.

Today Tucows noted record quarterly revenue of $26.4 million for the last quarter. That’s the seventh record revenue quarter in a row for the firm. The firm posted $97 million in revenue for the year; a record.

Here are some other interesting facts from its investor conference call:

YummyNames, which monetizes and sells Tucows’ inventory of domain names, saw its revenue up 24% year over year. It also had a record average selling price.

Tucows CEO Elliott Noss stated that over the past 12 months, the average selling price of individual names has more than doubled.

I’m not usually a big fan of averages since a few sales can skew the number. But I think YummyNames’ domains sell in a fairly consistent band, so this is actually an interesting data point.

The firm also moved much of its inventory of domain names to a fresh domain name parking firm. As a result, the firm had flat parking revenue for the quarter — compared to a falling trend in previous quarters.

I guess it’s true — “flat is the fresh growth” in domain parking.

(Bill Sweetman, who runs YummyNames, was recently promoted to Vice President.)

Tucows’ retail operation Hover benefited from the firm’s opposition of SOPA. It picked up Wikia, run by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, as a client thanks in part to its stance against SOPA.

Noss also stated he’ll be surprised if there are fewer than 1,000 applications for fresh top level domain names.