Why Verisign’s Revenues Will Remain Under Pressure Despite Swelling Domain Registrations

VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) reported better-than-expected earnings for the third quarter recently, with revenues coming in-line with analyst expectations. Notably, while the demand for domain names remained strong over the period, first time renewal rates were weaker due to emerging markets contributing a higher proportion of the mix. As this trend is expected to continue over coming quarters, VeriSign’s Revenues are likely to see muted growth despite a steady increase in the number of .net and .com domain name registrations globally.

However, the company will very likely be able to raise domain registration fees once negotiations with ICANN are over around Q2 2020 – allowing VeriSign to report better revenue growth figures from the second half of 2020.

A Quick Look At Verisign’s Revenues

• Verisign makes revenue by selling domain name registry services.
• The company has only one reporting segment and had total revenue of $1.21 billion in 2018.
• Total revenues reached $1.21 billion in 2018 from $1.14 billion in 2016 – representing an annualized growth rate of 3.1%. Q3 2019 revenue came in at $0.31 billion which was nearly identical to the figure for the previous year
• We expect revenues for full-year 2019 to reach $1.23 billion because of the following trends:
  • Number of domains jumped to 153 million in 2018 from $142 million in 2016, and we expect this key metric to swell to 157 million by the end of the year
  • Average price per domain has shrunk gradually from $8.03 in 2016 to $7.94 in 2018. We expect the trend to continue in 2019, with the average price falling further to $7.86.