Tucows Notes Strong Earnings and More Stock Buybacks

Registrar turns in solid numbers and plans to buy back more shares.

Tucows, the world’s third largest domain name registrar, released earnings today that show its business is weathering the economic downturn well. It also disclosed another offer to buy back shares in the firm.

Tucows (AMEX: TCX) noted net income of $4.48M for the second quarter 2009, compared to $2.21M for the same quarter last year. It’s hard to compare the quarters thanks to extraordinary items. This year’s earnings were boosted by $2M related to the sale of Tucow’s stake in Afilias and $0.6 million related to patents that Tucows assigned to another firm for commercialization. It also benefited $1.6M thanks to currency fluctuations. But last year’s numbers included $1.5M from the sale of the firm’s hosting assets.

For the latest quarter, Tucows noted $14.737M in revenue from its OpenSRS reseller platform for domain registrations, which makes up the bulk of its revenue. The firm also grossed $1.456M from domain name sales and leases in its YummyNames division and $1.259M from its retail domain registration business.

The firm disclosed its third planned dutch auction tender to buy back up to 7.4% of the outstanding shares of the firm.

Shares finished the day up three cents to 46 cents.