Renewals of .vip domain names for Chinese registrants are exceeding 75%, the registry Minds + Machines (MMX) announced Monday. MMX launched their .è´ç© (.shopping) TLD General Availability last week and .law is expected to be general available in China by the end of June.
In their announcement, MMX said manual renewals for the period 1 March to 30 June, covering over 525,000 registered .vip domain names that reached their annual renewal date in China during the period, have already surpassed 75%. This figure is, the directors believe, likely to increase as the rolling 45 day “at grace” period that follows a registration’s anniversary renewal date ends. This exceeds the renewal rates for .com and .net. The most recent renewal rates for both top level domains for the fourth quarter of 2017 globally was 72.2 percent compared with 67.6 percent for the same quarter in 2016.
The renewal results place .vip in-line with the best-in-class renewal rates of leading top-level domains globally and, the directors believe, based on the data available, makes .vip the top performing mass generic TLD in China, total registrations in .vip now standing at 888,400.
“The key metrics for our lead property in China continue to be exceptional. Standard registrations in .vip, excluding bulk registrations, are up 28% year-on-year, and the usage count – based on the number of live .vip pages showing on China’s main online search engine – is up 19% year-on-year,â said Toby Hall, CEO of MMX.
âFurther, we are very encouraged that the major technology groups in China are now wanting to increasingly promote the extension, most notably Alibaba and Tencent Cloud which has recently expanded its registrar operations in the region. The BAT’s, China’s major technology companies, increasingly see the provisioning of domain names as a key way to bring SME’s into their cloud based universes for the delivery of services. As was the case last year, we anticipate revenues from the region to be H2 weighted given the 2018 allocation of .vip premium inventory is only now being released, post completion of its main renewal season. The H2 weighting of Chinese revenues will be further accentuated by the timing of this year’s new property launches in China highlighted below.”
MMX has 27 new generic top level domains in their stable with 1.5 million domains under management. The largest of their new gTLDs is .vip which has 893,000 DUM globally, followed by .work (323,000), .london (86,000) and .bayern (33,000). They are the sixth largest new gTLD registry by number of new gTLDs under management and third largest by registrations, according to nTLDstats.
In their announcement, MMX said .è´ç© (.shopping) formally entered General Availability on 21 June and that .law is due to go on general sale in China before month-end. Both will be marketed by in-country specialists as high-value domain names. As a result, the directors do not anticipate significant registration numbers but do expect meaningful revenue contributions from each over the course of the following 12 months. MMX also expects to announce in the next 8 weeks their first innovation based project which will potentially be released in the Asia region, at the same time as in the west, in the second half of 2018.
“Continuing to build our renewal revenues is central to our business and it is extremely encouraging that .vip renewal rates continue to be market leading,â said Hall. âIt provides strong cash flow and recurring revenues from which we can further scale the business with innovation and selective acquisition as exemplified with our recent acquisition of ICM Registry LLC.”