Tucows reported its financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, 2008 today.
Net income per share fell to $.02 for the six months ending June 30, 2008 against $.05 per share profit for the first six months of last year.
Elliot Noss, President and CEO of Tucows. is quoted as saying:
“Our portfolio of high value domain names continued to make an impressive contribution. We note that the second quarter of 2007 included a large $3 million bulk sale of domain names.”
As you will recall we wrote several posts about Tucows keeping their own expired domains instead of releasing them. Now we see that this practice has gone right to their bottom line.
$3 Million dollars in sales in just the second quarter of 2007? All those are the domain that came off the expired domain list and Tucows grabbed them.
Parking revenues on Tucows owned domains seem to be $1,873,000 for the three months ending June 30, 2008 as opposed to $3,606,000 for the three months ending June 30, 2007.
So parking revenues appear to be following fabulous.com, in their quarterly report, and are down 50% since last year.
Shares of Tucows closed down $.03 at $.54 during trading, close to its 52 week low of $.50 a share. The quarterly report was was released after trading.
Here is the entire report:
Summary Financial Results
(Numbers in Thousands of US Dollars, Except Per Share Data)
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3 Months 3 Months 6 Months 6 Months
Ended Ended Ended Ended
June 30, June 30, June 30, June 30,
2008 2007 2008 2007
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Net Revenue $20,450 $20,815 $39,162 $38,586
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EBITDA 3,689 4,572 4,194 6,544
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Adjusted Net Income 1,779 4,686 2,732 7,128
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Net (Loss)/Income 2,209 3,171 1,127 3,921
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Net (Loss) Income/Share 0.03 0.04 0.02 0.05
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cash Flow from Operations 2,580 2,359 2,697 3,524
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Summary of Revenue and Cost of Revenue
(Numbers in Thousands of US Dollars)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Revenue Cost of Revenue
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Three Three Three Three
Months Months Months Months
Ended Ended Ended Ended
June 30, June 30, June 30, June 30,
2008 2007 2008 2007
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Traditional Domain
Registration Services $13,269 $12,274 $10,505 $9,110
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Domain Portfolio 1,873 3,606 181 158
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Email Services 1,552 1,881 (24) 209
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Retail Services 2,046 1,208 577 417
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Other Services 1,711 1,845 421 413
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Total $20,450 $20,815 $11,660 $10,307
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Net revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2008 was $20.5 million compared with $20.8 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2007.
Revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2007 included the atypically large sale of a block of domain names from the Company’s portfolio of high value domain names in the amount of $3.0 million.
Adjusted net income for the second quarter of 2008 was $1.8 million, compared with $4.7 million for the corresponding quarter of last year. Net income was $2.2 million, or $0.03 per share, compared with $3.2 million, or $0.04 per share, for the second quarter of fiscal 2007.
Deferred revenue at the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2008 was $54.4 million, an increase of 11% from $49.0 million at the end of the second quarter of 2007 and an increase of 2% from $53.6 million at the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2008.
Cash and restricted cash at the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2008 was $2.9 million compared with $6.2 million at the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2007 and $7.5 million at the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2008. This decrease compared to the first quarter of this year is primarily the result of the repayment of the $6 million promissory note payable to the former shareholders of mailbank.com Inc., as well as payment of $1.4 million on the Company’s bank loan. These uses of funds were partially offset by the $2.6 million of cash flow generated from operations, as well as $1.4 million generated through the sale of 14,000 hosting accounts to Hostopia.
Tags: Domain Parking Stock Index
Nothing to do with domains, but it is important to note that the US budget deficit for July 2008 was a staggering $102.8 Billion dollars, almost triple from July 2007 deficit of $36.4.
So far this year, the budget deficit totals $371.4 billion, more than double last year’s deficit through the same time period of $157.4 billion
The Bush administration recently revised its forecast for this year’s deficit, lowering it from an estimate of $410 billion, down to $389 billion. However, the Congressional Budget Office is more pessimistic, projecting the deficit for this year will total $400 billion when the current budget year wraps up on Sept. 30.
The 2009 budget year, which begins Oct. 1, the administration is projecting a deficit of $482 billion, which would be the highest in history, surpassing the old mark of $413 billion set in 2004.
Tags: Uncategorized
With iTunes downloads topping 5 billion, some states have begun to levy sales tax on digital downloads.
Call it the iTax.
In 2008 alone, at least nine states have considered digital download taxes, and at least five of those states have enacted them into law.
Nebraska’s governor signed a digital download tax bill into law in April, and a similar measure was adopted in Tennessee in June.
As CNET News reported a few months ago, Indiana, South Dakota, and Utah also passed sales tax on digital downloads this year.
Tech industry groups like NetChoice, which counts eBay, AOL, and Yahoo as members, have been lobbying against the rise in so-called iTaxes–with limited success.
“With global warming and a world that’s running out of oil, the last thing governments should do is add taxes on something that uses no oil and produces no carbon,” said Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice. “A digital download is the greenest way to buy music, movies, and software, since it requires no driving to the store, no delivery vans, and no plastics or packaging.”
Wisconsin and California attempted to impose sales taxe on digital downloads but failed.
Other states are considering the tax. Massachusetts has a draft bill circulating and legislators in both Wyoming and Washington will be reviewing their download tax policies at the request of tax collectors.
Including Nebraska and Tennessee, there are 17 states, plus the District of Columbia, that tax digital downloads: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Washington.
Other downloads that might be subject to sales tax include digital audio works, digital audiovisual works, including movies, music videos, TV shows, and digital books.
Digital sales account for 30 percent of revenues in the U.S.
Electronic book sales in the U.S. are up more than 25 percent from a year earlier.
Tags: Uncategorized
Wow
How lucky can you get.
Right now there are 4 shows on TV using one of our domains (domains acquired way before the shows were announced.
Right now finishing up its first summer run is Wipeout on ABC, a game show which did very well in the ratings. We own Wipeout.com
On USA network another new show is finishing up its first season, In Plain Sight. We own inplainsight.com
Coming on the air in a few weeks on Fox is another game show, hole in the wall, which we own holeinthewall.com
Finally we own the domain GotTalent.com. There is America’s Got Talent in the US, Britain’s Got Talent is a hit in the UK and a new spin off the World’s Got Talent just got the green light in Britain as well.
Sometimes its good to be plain lucky
Tags: Misc
August 12th, 2008 · 1 Comment
According to an article in AdWeek within the next month, the Department of Justice will decide whether to block the deal Google struck with Yahoo to serve ads on some of its search results pages.
The companies are set to implement the deal in early October.
The DOJ has asked a broad range of executives for input into what the deal will mean for the ad industry.
Microsoft, is urging agencies to come out against the agreement.
“We’re concerned about the Yahoo! deal,” said Rob Norman, CEO of WPP-owned GroupM North America. “For advertisers to prosper, they need competitive markets. We think Google is a fantastic company. Our sense is that if the transaction with Yahoo! proceeds, there’s the potential the development of the Yahoo ad system, Panama and other competing systems will atrophy over time.”
Interviews with executives from shops large and small have mostly echoed these concerns. The respondents worry that the agreement will create higher prices, less competition and give Google a stranglehold on the search ad market.
The deal hinges on the scale economics of the search market. Yahoo plans to show Google search results for an undefined subset of queries. Yahoo’s head of North American ad sales David Karnstedt said those searches would mostly cover “tail” terms, or less frequently searched terms that Google handles better because of its larger marketplace. That means more clicks and conversions, he said. “If this gives more volume than converts, it’s a good thing for advertisers,” he said.
Yahoo says they expect to generate $800 million in revenue from the deal. This aspect troubles many ad agencies, is they believe all that extra money will come to Yahoo in the form of higher prices.
An analysis by search management system provider SearchIgnite concluded prices on Yahoo keywords funneled to Google would rise 22 percent.
What’s more, Google’s more robust marketplace it has more advertisers, handles more searches and gets more clicks, therefore Google will exceed Yahoo’s search ads in revenue generation in most instances, critics argue.
The advertiser will find itself spending more for the same amount of clicks because they’re coming from the most expensive part of the ecosystem,” said Kevin Lee, CEO of Did-it.com, a New York search-marketing firm. “It’s not rocket science.”
The greater worry beyond a short-term spike in prices is that the deal would accelerate the “virtuous cycle” Google enjoys. Its ad platform already far outperforms Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s.
With more advertisers and dollars in the system, the cycle would accelerate. Microsoft contends it would result in Google controlling up to 90 percent of the search ad market.
The situation has exposed industry fault lines. Executives from IPG, WPP, Omnicom and Aegis all expressed discomfort with Google-Yahoo deal.
Tags: Domain Industry · Domain Parking Stock Index
August 12th, 2008 · 1 Comment
According to a report released today by the Marshal Threat Research and Content Engineering (TRACE) report for the first half of 2008, cyber criminals are using ‘blended attacks’ to distribute malware and links to hacked websites via email on an unprecedented scale.
Unpatched browsers are putting more than 45 percent of Internet users at risk when they visit legitimate Websites infected with malicious code.
Three botnets are responsible for 75 percent of all spam, pumping out billions of messages every hour through zombie clients and being used to launch mass attacks on Websites.
In an alarming new development, spam sent from webmail accounts that had been automatically created using CAPTCHA-breaking technology was seen to be on the increase, rendering common anti-spam defenses such as reputation less effective.
TRACE also identified a major increase in spam used to infect computers with Trojan malware. During the same period, many of the most popular Websites were found to be hosting malicious software designed to steal data or add PCs to botnets. The TRACE team identified 1.5 million Websites infected by a botnet attack in May 2008.
In the six months ending in June 2008, the TRACE team saw spam volumes double, with the Srizbi botnet identified as the most prolific offender, capable of pushing out 7.8 billion messages an hour. As the world’s largest botnet, Srizbi controls more than 315,000 infected machines sending 50 percent of all spam, followed by Rustock and Mega-D botnets, generating 14 percent each. Marshal traced 90 percent of all spam to just seven botnets, indicating millions of Trojan-infected computers worldwide.
The report notes a reduction in the use of gimmicks such as image spam (down to one percent), with spammers reverting to social engineering to dupe recipients into opening malicious messages, using sensational subject lines relating to the economic crisis or celebrity deaths.
Commenting on this year’s findings, Bradley Anstis, vice president of Products for Marshal said, “Spammers are moving en masse to the Web and distributing malware on a scale not seen before. Criminals are not bothering to set up their own sites; they are infecting legitimate sites with malicious code.
We can no longer rely on traditional URL filtering lists because the ’safe’ sites may no longer warrant that trust. The use of webmail accounts to send spam makes IP reputation or message header inspection less effective because the spam is generated using Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail, so the messages will appear to come from legitimate sources. In our view, the use of botnets to launch mass Website attacks is the most concerning issue to arise so far in 2008.”
Although TRACE reports that phishing represented just 0.5 percent of all spam over the last six months, the TRACE report draws attention to the flaw in the Domain Name System (DNS) identified by security expert Dan Kaminsky in early 2008. The flaw could have been exploited by criminals to redirect Internet users to phishing Websites, even if they typed the correct URL into their browser.
Of course over the last couple of years the US government proudly announced that it had arrested spammer responsible for much of the spam. Att he time of the arrests the US government said that everyone would now see a reduction in spam because the offenders we behind bars.
Guess not US.
Maybe at some point the Government will realize that the Internet is not based 100% in the US and therefore the US cannot simply pass laws in the US that will control the conduct of the Internet worldwide.
Tags: Internet News · Legal
A new study from search-marketing firm Covario, shows that customers representing more than 120 technology brands at major tech companies such as Adobe, Lenovo and Intel, spent 14.3% of their search advertising budgets on Yahoo in the second quarter of 2008, up from 10.3% for the prior quarter, but still down from 18% a year ago.
Google’s share of those customers’ search advertising dollars declined to 81.2% down from 85.6% in the first quarter of the year.
Overall Google’s overall search advertising spending by Covario customers jumped 43% from a year ago.
But now, there also appears to be some good news for Yahoo. It’s the first time since the first quarter of 2007, when Covario started collecting data, that Yahoo has gained share among its clients while Google has lost. Covario estimates that its clients will spend roughly $240 million on search advertising in 2008.
Advertisers in the Covario study paid and average of $1.16 per click for search ads on Yahoo in the second quarter, compared to $1.09 on Google. The gap in the first quarter was much wider: an average of $1.59 per click at Yahoo and $1.13 per click at Google.
With advertisers paying $1.16 a click and $1.09 per click, I don’t see it trickling down to domainers.
So it must be going to those companies bottom line.
Tags: Domain Industry · Domain Parking Stock Index
In the month since Apple opened an online software clearinghouse called the App Store, users have downloaded more than 60 million programs for the iPhone, Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in an interview tody.
While most of those applications were free, Apple sold an average of $1 million a day in applications for a total of about $30 million in sales over the month, Jobs said.
If sales stay at the current pace, Apple stands to reap at least $360 million a year in new revenue from the App Store, Mr. Jobs said. “This thing’s going to crest a half a billion, soon,” he added. “Who knows, maybe it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time.”
Tags: Uncategorized
On August 20 at 5:45 pm PST moniker.com will hold an live online auction at the Search Engine Strategies (SES), from the San Jose Convention Center.
Here is the Premium names selected by Moniker for this event:
Ad.com
CTR.com
Much.com
Fees.com
Rebate.com, Rebates.com (sold at domain round table for $1,000,000 in 2007)
Cart.net
AdWeb.com
InternetAds.com
OnlineSolution.com
FindALender.com
GolfGame.com
SearchMovies.com
TicketSavers.com
FinanceProtection.com
MedicalService.com
ClickSave.com
BankServices.com
RealEstateDirect.com
Searching.com
PaidTraffic.com
RepeatTraffic.com
Brand.net
Discount.org
EngineInfo.com
EngineNews.com
SEO.mobi
SEOBrand.com
SEMBrand.com
SEOProducts.com
TrafficExpert.com
LocalDirectory.com
AmazingSEOTips.com
ProfessionalSEO.com
SearchEngineTool.com
KeywordSelection.com
SearchGalaxy.com
NetGuy.net
TopSEO.us
NoCostSEO.com
NationalSEO.com
YouSearch.com
SEOHeros.com
SeoAffiliates.net
GreatWebTraffic.com
FreeSEOKit.com
SEOandPPCTools.com
AmericianCars.com
AutoLoanAPR.com
LoanCalculator.com
GameDiscounts.com
CellPhoneEssentials.com
SeniorHealthBenefits.com
WebPortal.com
WebTrack.com
The final catalog will be released soon, and will include approximately 2,000 domains, and of that list, only the top 200 names will make it into the live domain auction. For more information, visit http://www.moniker.com/auction.
SES attendees are automatically eligible to attend the private live auction.
Bidders not attending can place bids live online through SnapNames LiveTM
Interested bidders may also submit an absentee bid form to the auctioneer, or sign up for telephone proxy bidding.
Moniker will also host an extended online auction in conjunction with the live event in San Jose, offering thousands of additional names for sale. The online auction will begin on Wednesday, August 20 and continue through Thursday, August 28.
Tags: Domain Auctions
According to annoucement by the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. orgainzers all sponsorships for future T.R.A.F.F.I.C shows, not including T.R.A.F.F.I.C. DOWNUNDER are going up for bid.
Here are the prices
BREAKFAST - bidding starts at $2,500
LUNCH - bidding starts at $10,000
COCKTAIL PARTY- bidding starts at $7500
DINNER - bidding starts at $15,000
OVERALL SPONSOR - bidding starts at $25,000 (BIN $50,000)
Guess in the domainer enviroment why not auction off sponships as well?
Looks like Trafficz is out as the show sponsor as they move on to the Domain Round Table in Washington in June.
Tags: Domain Shows
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