Guidance for domain growth — Verisign lowers

Firm cites waning pandemic surge and general macroeconomic situation for lower-than-expected growth.

Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) has lowered its guidance for domain name growth this year.

The firm originally expected the base of registered .com and .net domains to grow 2.5% to 4.5%. Now, it expects 1.75% to 3.5% growth. It has also lowered the top end of its revenue guidance and expects to generate $1.42 billion to $1.435 billion in 2022.

Verisign blames two factors. First, the surge of registrations as businesses went online during the pandemic appears to be waning. Second, the firm blames “recent global macroeconomic factors.”

In response to an analyst’s question, Verisign CEO Jim Bidzos noted:

We also have heard from some of our registrars that they’re seeing the same thing we are, meaning that incremental demand for fresh registrations that grew during the pandemic appears to be subsiding. It’s difficult to predict how the changes in these and other trends will impact demand for fresh registrations and growth in our domain name base, we do expect that fresh registrations in the second half of the year will be similar with the levels we saw during the second half of last year. Hopefully that helps.