Fabulous issues quarterly cash flow statement

[JayK]

Dark Blue Sea, who operate Fabulous, issued their quarterly cash flow statement on 31st Jan. It makes interesting reading & can be viewed in fulll at www.asx.com.au (type in dbs as the company code & search for last months announcements).

Highlights for PPCers are:

The Company continues to benefit from its position as an active participant in the US$9bn online advertising industry. The whole online advertising industry has been growing at a 25 % to 30% rate since mid 2002

The keyword search segment ...has been the stand-out performer - broadly doubling in size each year for the last three years.

Other highlights:

Fabulous continues to build its own portfolio. During the December quarter, they acquired an additional 60,000 domains at a cost of US$360,000 ($6 each), taking the number of domains in its portfolio to 260,000. They state " the domain name portfolio is viewed as an enduring asset having long-term revenue generating capabilities".

Reference to the Marchex deal - Fabulous provides info that the transaction was priced at $10 per unique visitor per month and that the deal marks the start of likely consolidation in the market and that since the announcement there has been significant increase in new domain registrations.

In all this looks like good news for domainers and fabulous news for Fabulous.

(p.s I'm a Fab shareholder - but have no other connection except for the domains that I park there)

 

[David G]

"...the transaction was priced at $10 per unique visitor per month..."

Regarding that 160+ million $ sale. That is very important information. Can anyone here tell what that means using clearer terminology.

 

[ShaunP]

ULtsearch had 17,000,000 uniques a month, times $10 each, about equalls the $168 million selling price. I think that's what it means.

Shaun

 

[clemzonguy]

What domains are they buying for $6 and under what registrant information?

 

[actnow]

What domains are they buying for $6 and under what registrant information?

Fabulous is a registrar.

So, you are asking, what ownership name is Fab. using for their own inventory?

What would also be interesting to know, is what type of names are they
buying? (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, etc.)

 

[hiOsilver]

Fabulous is a registrar.

So, you are asking, what ownership name is Fab. using for their own inventory?

What would also be interesting to know, is what type of names are they
buying? (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, etc.)

I do not know all of what they are buying. However, every name that I have seen their whois data on has been a .com. Registrant reads "Domain Active Pty". And, no, I will not post any examples.

 

[David G]

Registrant reads "Domain Active Pty"

I have seen that too on many names, including a number I tried to reg over time taken by them. Seems like an odd name.

P.S. Seems like they have a lot of trademark names, and a number of WIPO cases filed, i.e. Playboy filed a WIPO for 70 names. Go here for info:

http://www.google.com/search?source...LD,GGLD:2004-32,GGLD:en&q="domain+active+pty"

 

[clemzonguy]

"Domain Active Pty".

K. That's what I was looking for.
The picture is becoming a lot clearer now. :-D

http://www.domainactive.com/

 

[clemzonguy]

Actually now that I think about it if Fabulous is a registrar then they have the ability to register a name, see if it gets traffic then delete it if not. There are numerous entries in "deleted domains" where the domain doesn't show registered anymore when I look at the whois. There was a previous post about that topic. I'm not sure if Domain Active was/is involved with this but it does make an interesting connection seeing as that appears quite often in new registrations I check. They are also able to see the amount of traffic people are receiving in their Fabulous porfolios if you are using their DNS. This would seem valuable in coming up with new names to speculate on for traffic purposes.

 

[David G]

Actually now that I think about it if Fabulous is a registrar then they have the ability to register a name, see if it gets traffic then delete it if not.

Good observation, that is also so with others too such as Enom where I have seen many names I believe owned by a firm connected with or owned by them. I seem to recall one of the Enom nameservers being that firms name who sometimes ended up owning the names. I purchased a recently expired name from them last yr.

Also, Buy Domains.com is affiliated with or owns a registry too, I think it's called Domain Discover. I once had a number of names there which were really with BuyDomains but they used DomainDiscover Control Panel and Support under that name. I am sure others do this too. What a cool free way to see if it gets traffic and is worth holding on to.

 

[clemzonguy]

What a cool free way to see if it gets traffic and is worth holding on to.

Compana doing same thing too I believe now.

Registrar: COMPANA, LLC
Whois Server: whois.budgetnames.com
Referral URL: http://www.budgetnames.com
Name Server: NS1.RENTALQUEUE.COM
Name Server: NS2.RENTALQUEUE.COM

Numerous registrations!

I think this was addressed with ICANN or so I thought....

Registrars should not be abusing this for their own profit.

 

[typeins]

You would all be doing it too if you had access to the same resources!

 

[clemzonguy]

You would all be doing it too if you had access to the same resources!

The thing is we don't have access to it and are not afforded the same ability. Registrars should be in place only for domain registration, not drop catching, and not scouting out names for traffic. Eventually they are going to simply be keeping the names and not putting them up for auction anymore.

 

[JayK]

I guess there's not much money in just registration, it's a competitive market. They are all trying to add value. Basically Fabulous/Domain Active/Dark Blue Sea, whatever you want to call them are trying to become one of the biggest domain holders in the world. If they can do that through registrations, drops whatever they will. The question really is what is their end game?

 

[actnow]

They are also able to see the amount of traffic people are receiving in their Fabulous porfolios if you are using their DNS. This would seem valuable in coming up with new names to speculate on for traffic purposes.

Last Fall, when Fabulous announced how many names they were registering, I
realized they have a free resource for data mining by analyzing what is most
profitable from their own customer's traffic.

That bothers me because they then become your major competitor.

If I discover DomainSponsor is competing with me. I will reduce my portfolio
with them. (I will take my 50 names and move them elsewhere.) :-D

 

[typeins]

.."the company has been registering domains at a rate of 20-30,000 domains per month this financial year.."

Thats a fair few domains

 

[peekaboo]

.."the company has been registering domains at a rate of 20-30,000 domains per month this financial year.."

i don't understand what are they 'registering'? 20-30,000 regfee domains each month? wtf?? that claim is inaccurate anyway, because it is on course for 300,000 domains in 12 months. even ult can't grow that rapidly/doesn't have that many

looks like they are trying to reclaim the quantity in lieu of those they loose in front of wipo. and it looks like they lost each and every case so far

 

[clemzonguy]

They have a free resource for data mining by analyzing what is most profitable from their own customer's traffic.

That explains why they started buying keywords related to many of my websites out of the clear "blue" sea. It's out in the open now. Maybe PPC was simply a cover because the payouts aren't that great compared to DS.

 

[Honan]

Originally Posted by typeins
.."the company has been registering domains at a rate of 20-30,000 domains per month this financial year

i don't understand what are they 'registering'? 20-30,000 regfee domains each month? wtf?? that claim is inaccurate anyway, because it is on course for 300,000 domains in 12 months. even ult can't grow that rapidly/doesn't have that many

looks like they are trying to reclaim the quantity in lieu of those they loose in front of wipo. and it looks like they lost each and every case so far

Producer..The financial year here in Australia commences on 1 July 2004
The report quoted was for the 6 months ending December 2004
FYI ...Accusing a public company of making inaccurate statements to the australian stock exchange is quite a serious matter, here down under.

 

[typeins]

Its not hard to register 20-30,000 average domains per month if you have a big bucketload of cash and automated scripts which identify the keywords they have defined and registers and sets them all up etc..

Remember they arent going for the million dollar names here.. they are trying to get a million $1 names hehe