Verisign reported its third quarter fiscal 2017 earnings on Oct. 26, once again showing growth in the dot com and dot net domain registries.
For the quarter, Verisign reported revenue of $292 million, up by 1.7 percent year over year. Net income was reported at $115 million, up from $114 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2016.
Among Verisign’s operational activities is the company’s management of the dot com and dot net domain spaces.
“At the end of September, the domain name base in .com and .net totaled 145.8 million, consisting of 130.8 million names for .com and 15 million names for .net,” Jim Bidzos, executive chairman, president and chief executive officer, said during his company’s earnings call. “The domain name base increased by 1.47 million net names during the third quarter after processing 8.9 million new gross registrations.”
“Gross additions during the quarter benefited from continued strength from US based registrars,” Bidzos added.
A key metric for Verisign is also the renewal rate for domains, which the company isn’t able to fully measure until 45 days after the end of the quarter. For the second quarter of 2017, .com and .net renewal rate was 74.0 percent, up marginally from the 73.8 percent for the second quarter of 2016.
During the company’s earnings call, Bidzos was asked about the relationship between Bitcoin and cryptocurrency use and domain growth.
“I don’t know of any direct relationship between people purchasing bitcoin and domain names,” Bidzos said. I can tell you that we do report on trends in domain name registration and bitcoin trends frequently, consistently and often. So people are registering names related to bitcoin and cryptocurrency.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
