Fabulous issues quarterly cash flow statement

[typeins]

Oh and yes as JoeMart said above.. they are a public company and they are audited etc.. so i'm sure those figures arent very far off.

 

[peekaboo]

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

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.

tell that to enron shareholders

anyway, i just dont understand a strategy of registering thousands of regfree names per month? i get it that they are in unique position to see what works and what not, but still this is not 1995, this is year 2005, and just how many traffic domains out there are still not registered, or a worthy of a 5 year wait? espceically if u loose a some of them thru the wipo proceedings :clown:

finally, as stated in their report:

- "New domain registrations are treated as an operating expense."

- "Whilst these new registrations have contributed to revenue during the current period, the operating margin of these new domains is negative at present due to to the total cost of acquisition exceeding the total revenue derived from these new domains. Strategically, company is of the view that these new domains can be managed through a combination of traffic revenue and sales to become profitable on a four to five year payback."

in other words, the company is saying that they are not much different than most of us here, and that they are using similar 'spray & pray' approach.

anyway, the numbers are these:

fiscal 2003 = $9.5 million loss
fiscal 2004 = $830k profit

which is a step in right direction...

but implicit in their report is the fact thhat because of their own internall traffic being betwen 2-4 times smaller than their customer's traffic (external) most of their income is derived not from their own domains (internal) but from their customer's domains (external - like us here) by way of advertising affiliation, even though the marging of profit on their own traffic is higher than on our own.

bottom line is, this company still significantly depends on other people's traffic, and it is more than obvious that if it wasn't for our portfolios with them (especially through major players' like rick s.) they would probably be in nowhere fast. so i guess their challenge is to rise above that fact and stop being dependent on others, because that is such a volatile way of doing business. hence is my guess of their frantic domain registration spree.

my guess also is that they are in such a desperate need of good traffic domains, that for people with good traffic portfolios this is a chance to deal with them.

 

[clemzonguy]

The payouts aren't that great compared to DS.

Actually to be fair I haven't tried Fabulous 4.0 yet

 

[actnow]

Accusing a public company of making inaccurate
statements to the australian stock exchange is quite a serious matter, here
down under.

tell that to enron shareholders

The U.S. has had strict acctg. standards for public companies for many years.
And, there will always be some companies that will push the envelope like
Enron.

That is why the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was created. This new law SCARES
every executive. So, you will not see many U.S. companies pushing the
envelope for a while. (Until, they can find some loopholes.)

As for Fabulous registering a lot of mediocre names each month. They clearly
state that the biggest potential threat is their dependence on the availability
of the quality traffic names of their clients. These clients can quickly move
their traffic to other competitors like DomainSponsor, etc. without notice.

That is why they are trying to establish a strong baseline of traffic from their
own inventory.

They figure it is a cheap insurance policy plus that inventory will continue to
rise in value if they make smart choices. And, that is why the "datamining"
is crucial to their long term strategy.

As for the wipo cases, that might have been a flaw in their strategy. Which,
I am sure they have corrected.

Fab. probably saw a lot of traffic going to the word "playboy". However,
what they did not think through, is that it was going to one guy
here and one guy there.

Playboy really didn't want to go after one little guy at a time. But, when
Fab. registered alot of potential infringements, by a company with deep
pockets, they wanted to use them as the example.

Playboy wanted to make them the "poster boy" of playboy trademark infringements.
Plus, if they didn't attack Fab, they would continue to build more inventory.

Now, most domainers will think twice before infringing on Playboy.

Long term, Fab. just wants to move up the "food chain" (supply chain).
Unfortunately, it will be at the expense of the small domainers like me.

 

[peekaboo]

yeah, but registering pakistaniplayboy dotcom and other similar copyright names, with 0 overtures, makes me think that their 'data mining' was downright awful we all make mistakes, but their mistakes are on larger scale than mine (or maybe it is the opposite??)

i guess one of the reason they have to play that way is they are very small and cash-strapped themselves. their total bank reserves now are only 3M AUS, which is what ult was making in one month

i just think that they should be going after quality, not quantity. largest 'portfolio' in the world means almost absolutely nothing if 90% are regfee names without much traffic. i think they came late to this 'domain traffic' party, and it's going to be increasingly difficult to make something out of it.

anyway, if i was their penny stock holder i would be very concerned as to their direction. when a publicly-listed company doesn't have a better business idea than to be registering copyright-infringing names with 0 overtures, then...

my uneducated prediction is that within 5 years this company will be either swallowed by some merger or acquisition (positive outlook) or will be bankrupt (negative outlook.) for that first to happen, they need to have clean profitable sheets for a little while. for that second to happen, it doesn't take much really.

 

[JayK]

my uneducated prediction is that within 5 years this company will be either swallowed by some merger or acquisition (positive outlook) or will be bankrupt (negative outlook.) for that first to happen, they need to have clean profitable sheets for a little while. for that second to happen, it doesn't take much really.

Well, I'm hoping it is the former rather than the latter. As Typeins said, their largest stockholder is a smart cookie, plus they have some good management in place (Dan Warner, Richard Moore etc). I guess the route for them is to swallow another PPC or to start buying decent traffic portfolios(or both). An interesting outlook for them I think.

 

[typeins]

One thing i would have to consider.. is that Fabulous was "seeded" with LOTS of good names to begin with.. if i am correct and this is a guess based on evidence from back when it started... All of deans portfolio is basically what seeded Fabulous' portfolio.. he spent millions on these names and they are all great quality names which would be doing VERY nicely.. I have no idea about the names they are registering now.. but the initial portfolio was pretty damn good.

yeah, but registering pakistaniplayboy dotcom and other similar copyright names, with 0 overtures, makes me think that their 'data mining' was downright awful we all make mistakes, but their mistakes are on larger scale than mine (or maybe it is the opposite??)

i guess one of the reason they have to play that way is they are very small and cash-strapped themselves. their total bank reserves now are only 3M AUS, which is what ult was making in one month

i just think that they should be going after quality, not quantity. largest 'portfolio' in the world means almost absolutely nothing if 90% are regfee names without much traffic. i think they came late to this 'domain traffic' party, and it's going to be increasingly difficult to make something out of it.

anyway, if i was their penny stock holder i would be very concerned as to their direction. when a publicly-listed company doesn't have a better business idea than to be registering copyright-infringing names with 0 overtures, then...

my uneducated prediction is that within 5 years this company will be either swallowed by some merger or acquisition (positive outlook) or will be bankrupt (negative outlook.) for that first to happen, they need to have clean profitable sheets for a little while. for that second to happen, it doesn't take much really.