75% renewal rate for early registrations — .VIP gets

Firm tops expectation it set last month.

Last month MMX (Minds + Machines) forecasted that regarding 70% or more of .VIP domains registered within the first 31 days of general availability last year would be renewed.

A commenter on that post claimed “There is no way it will be 70%”, insinuating it would be less. Now the totals are in and the number is indeed regarding 70%. 75% of domains registered during this period have been renewed.

This is an incredibly high first-year renewal rate for a fresh top level domain, especially one dependent on Chinese domain investors who have been scaling back investments lately.

In an notice today, the firm also stated sales from H1 2017 won’t be as strong as the peak last year when .VIP launched. MMX didn’t launch any fresh domains in the first half of this year but will launch .boston later this year. Still, it expects to reach breakeven based on renewal revenues covering fixed costs this year.

The firm also stated it is continuing to complete its “strategic review”, aka discussing selling the firm.