Domain growth even less than expected: Verisign earnings

Firm missed its lowered guidance.

Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) released its Q4 and full-year 2022 earnings results yesterday following the market closed.

The firm is generally good at pulling the right levers to hit its guidance for the .com/.net domain base. But this year’s comedown from the pandemic boom proved too much to overcome.

At the beginning of 2022, it expected the base to grow by 2.5% to 4.5%. It started reeling that in as the year progressed. By October 27, it stated it expected a full-year .com/.net base increase of .25% to 1.0%.

Even with just a couple of months to go, Verisign missed its guidance. Over the course of 2022, the base increased by just 0.2%.

The firm has set a wide range for next year. It is guiding to anywhere from 0.0% to 2.5% growth.

Even if the base doesn’t grow, Verisign’s revenue will, thanks to the 7% price hike it implemented in September 2022, and another 7% hike it will implement this coming September.

In another interesting note from Verisign’s results, it revealed that last year it made $19 million in revenue from running the .tv registry, but much of that was recognizing deferred revenue. GoDaddy Registry took this over in Q4 2022.