Global Domain Name and Internet Policy News
Registration for the 2022 Nordic Domain Days to be held in Stockholm in May 2022 has opened. The conference that focusses on the domain name industry in the five Nordic countries – Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, and let’s not forget the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland as well, is aimed as a means of discussing domain name issues for the Nordic region, and is aimed at registries, registrars, resellers, service providers and investors.
Following CentralNIC’s strategic investment and becoming owner of Slovakiaâs ccTLD manager SK-NIC in 2017, CentralNIC and SK-NIC have been continually investing in and improving the operations of .sk.
Last week there were 2 announcements. The first was SK-NIC is planning to introduce automated DNSSEC activation on the basis of the data on the DNS servers (so called CDS scanning). DNSSEC was launched in .sk in April this year and already one quarter of domain names are secured, ranking .sk among the top European ccTLDs in the share of domains secured by DNSSEC.
In the second announcement, for 2020 SK-NIC have announced theyâre preparing several new services that will increase the security of the virtual Slovakia. For the joint endeavours to continue to deliver such results, SK-NIC want to support these with their continued attractive price for .sk.
Therefore, the long-term promotions are being extended for 2020 with the cheaper new domains promotion running until 31 December 2020. This promotion, called the New Domains for Cheaper promotion, makes it possible to register a new domain for a single promotional price of â¬7 (plus VAT) instead of the standard price for Registrars according to the Price List. As well, the Achieve 100, Gain 100 promotion is also being extended until 31 December 2020. This promotion is in recognition of Registrarâs activity in registering new .sk domains by returning â¬100 (excluding VAT) for every 100 new domains registered through this Registrar. However in line with the goal of increasing security in .sk, the condition for securing the domain through DNSSEC has been added to include the domain in this promotion.
The British-based CentralNic has acquired the parent company of the German Key-Systems, KeyDrive, for $35.8 million it was announced today. The acquisition will see the combined group become the 11th largest registrar globally by generic top level domain volume and will be among the top 5 registry service providers by number of registry clients
The British-based CentralNic has acquired the parent company of the German Key-Systems, KeyDrive, for $35.8 million it was announced today. The acquisition will see the combined group become the 11th largest registrar globally by generic top level domain volume and will be among the top 5 registry service providers by number of registry clients.
Key-Systems, which his owned by a holding company called KeyDrive based in Luxembourg, includes a number of prominent domain name registrars and related businesses include new gTLD registry KSregistry, Skyway Data Center, nic.saarland, BrandShelter, Domain Discount 24, PartnerGate and Thomsen Trampedach, among others.
âThe acquisition of KeyDrive is a milestone for the company,â said Ben Crawford, CEO of CentralNic. âOn completion, the enlarged group will have doubled in size and will have the technology platforms, expert staff, vision and drive to rival the industryâs traditional leaders.â
Alex Siffrin, the founder and CEO of KeyDrive will become Chief Operating Officer of the Company and will also be a significant shareholder.
âI am personally excited to be welcoming Alex to CentralNic,â continued Crawford. âHis experience, shared values and standing within the industry will be a tremendous benefit to the group and a great addition to the management team.â
According to an announcement from CentralNic, the acquisition represents a reverse takeover under the AIM rules for Companies and is conditional upon shareholder approval.
CentralNic has been on an acquisition spree in recent years having acquired the Australian-New Zealand registrar instra for A$33 million in 2015, the rights to operate the .sk (Slovakia) country code top level domain (ccTLD) and renewed their exclusive wholesaler contract with XYZ.com – the owner of the .xyz new gTLD till 2032, both in 2017.
In 2017, it was reported that âCentralNicâs longer-term vision is to âjoin the ranks of world leaders in its industry, which include a number of multi-billion-dollar companies.ââ
In the new gTLD business, CentralNic currently provides backend registry services for 48 new gTLDs with over 4.8 million domain names under management making it the second largest by DUM while Key-Systems, through KSregistry, has 27 new gTLDs with over 32,000 DUM, according to nTLDstats. KSregistry mostly has brand new gTLDs hence the lower number of registrations while CentralNicâs include .xyz with 2.048 million, .online (844,000) and .site (499,000) with 8 with more than 100,000 registrations.
Domain name company, CentralNic, provider of registry and registrar services around the world, released its first half 2017 results this week showing impressive results and expansion
Domain name company, CentralNic, provider of registry and registrar services around the world, released its first half 2017 results this week showing impressive results and expansion.
Recurring revenues continue to increase, reflecting the strong focus on growing the proportion of CentralNic’s revenues being of a recurring nature, as exemplified post period-end by the acquisition of SK-NIC in August 2017 and the renegotiated .xyz contract.
For the first half of 2017 CentralNicâs adjusted EBITDA, excluding forex gains and losses, was £1.4m (H1 2016: £0.9m), up 50%, while gross profit for the six months was £3.0m (H1 2016: £2.3m), up 29.5%, revenue of £10.6m (H1 2016: £8.9m),up 19% and net cash of £7.73m (2016: £6.04m).
CentralNic, which boasts of customers in 200 countries throughout its divisions has also made a couple of significant announcements recently. Thursday they announced the .xyz added 10 years to their contract to provide registry services to 2032 and that theyâve moved to a monthly fee based on the volume of .xyz registrations and subscriptions managed.
In late August CentralNic also announced they had acquired the business and assets of SK-NIC, the manager of the exclusive country code top-level domain for Slovakia, .sk. The acquisition involves the purchase of the business, including all the property, rights and assets, of SK-NIC. There is optimism for significant growth in .sk. Slovakiaâs economy is growing strongly but a low penetration rate for .sk domain names. It has an estimated penetration of 63 domains per 1000 head of capita as at 31 December 2016, compared to the neighbouring Czech Republic at 121 domains per 1000 head of capita and to the UK with 162 domains per 1000 head of capita – indicating significant growth potential with competitive pricing and service levels.
CentralNicâs retail division focus on optimising marketing performance is paying dividends having completed integration and consolidation of Instra Group. Its wholesale business maintained its lead in global market share by volume, being the only company which supports 6 of the Top 20 new Top-Level Domains. There has also been new client wins as a registry service provider with .rugby .observer and .storage added to the companyâs portfolio as well as multiple contracts with country code Top-Level Domains.
“Our underlying first half results have been most encouraging as CentralNic continues to deliver organic growth alongside significant earnings enhancing acquisitions,â said Mike Turner, Chairman of CentralNic.
“Both our organic growth and roll-up strategy are underpinned by a drive to increase the size and scale of the business by focussing on activities which will deliver recurring revenues and high visibility of earnings. This concentrates our efforts on the higher margin and higher growth segments of the market.
“In keeping with the consistently heavy second-half weighting of results in recent years, the Board is confident that the Company is on track to meet market expectations for the full year to 31 December 2017, as we continue to diversify through the acquisition of businesses with high-levels of recurring revenue, organically grow our existing recurring revenue businesses, and take advantage of opportunities to trade in valuable premium domain names.”
The latest CENTR Domain Wire Stat Report shows that Montenegro (.me), Serbia (.rs) and Slovakia (.sk) are the European countries with the highest market share of the local ccTLD with 99 percent, 90 percent and 87 percent respectively.
The latest CENTR Domain Wire Stat Report shows that Montenegro (.me), Serbia (.rs) and Slovakia (.sk) are the European countries with the highest market share of the local ccTLD with 99 percent, 90 percent and 87 percent respectively.This means that in Montenegro, 99 percent of all domain names registered in the country across all top level domains are .me domains.The biannual report covers a wide number of statistics for Europe, such as there are 61.7 million country code domain names registered in Europe which is around a quarter of the 245 or so million domain names registered globally.And the European ccTLD with the highest growth rate is .pt (Portugal), but this is largely because registration policies for the ccTLD were liberalised earlier this year. And across Europe, two in five (40%) domain names are registered by individuals, while the remaining three in five are registered for commercial purposes. Plus the average length of a domain name is 11.2 characters and the top three registrars account for 45 percent of all European registrations.The report includes a list of the top 20 ccTLDs globally, which is headed by .de (Germany) with, as of the end of September, had 15.2 million registrations. There followed .tk (Tokelau – 10.83m) and .uk (United Kingdom – 10.24m).Within the top 20 list, the highest growth (year on year) has been achieved by .cn (China) at around 26.6 percent, partly due to changes in registration requirements. Second was .co (Columbia) with an increase of 25.1 percent, then .ru (Russia – 16%) .fr (France – 16%) and .br (Brazil – 15%). The median growth of the top 20 ccTLDs year-on-year was 11.5 percent.And IDN ccTLDs make up around 0.40 percent of the roughly 245 million domain names registered around the world, with the largest being .рф – the IDN ccTLD for the Russian Federation – with around 840,000 registrations.To download the complete Domain Wire Stat Report, go to centr.org/news/statistics/12-03-2012/2462/domainwire-stat-report-available.