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.xyz helps CentralNic double its revenue

Kevin Murphy, April 28, 2015, 11:02:33 (UTC), Domain Registries

CentralNic’s revenue almost doubled in 2014, helped by the launch of new gTLDs.
The UK-based registry today reported annual operating profit of £497,000 ($759,000), down from £694,000 ($1.05 million) in 2013, on the back of revenue up 99% at £6.06 million ($9.25 million).
Billings– money taken but not yet recorded as revenue — was up a whopping 154% at £9.89 million ($15.1 million).
Part of the reason for the growth was the launch of new gTLDs last year.
CentralNic acts as the registry back-end for eight TLDs that launched last year, including runaway volume leader .xyz, which has about 880,000 domains in its zone file today.
Another big contributor was Internet.bs, the Bahamas-based registrar that CentralNic acquired for $7.5 million last year.
The registrar had about 400,000 legacy gTLD domains under management at the end of the year, according to DI’s records.
Both new gTLDs and Internet.bs started contributing to revenue in the second half of the year.
CentralNic also said that its new “enterprise” division, which sells premium domains and offers consulting and software, was a growth factor.
CEO Ben Crawford told the markets that the new gTLD opportunity has so far been “softer” than expected.

Only a small number of retailers received their accreditations from ICANN to sell domains under the new TLDs in 2014, and a lack of public awareness pending the launches of the “superbrand TLDs” such as .google, .apple and .sony, meant that the market for new TLDs in 2014 was softer than had been projected by ICANN and other industry experts. It was essentially limited to domain investors and other early adopters.

Opinion in split in the industry on how much reliance can be put on what Crawford calls “super-brands” to do the heavy lifting when it comes to public awareness of new gTLDs.

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