QNB.com Sells For $1 Million Dollars To Qatar National Bank

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Another $1 million domain name transaction discovered by George Kirikos

 

QNB Corp., parent company of QNB Bank, filed a Current Report on Form 8-K regarding a change to its website domain to qnbbank.com and the planned sale of its prior domain name to a third party for a purchase price of $1,000,000.

The transfer of the prior domain name to the third party was completed on November 26, 2014, and QNB Bank has received the $1,000,000 purchase price therefor.

The domain name QNB.com has a value of $12,000 according to Estibot

Good lesson for all of us.

Domain Appraisal – qnb.com

EstiBot Value:$ 12,000 USD

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  1. George Kirikos says

    Nice tidbit about the Estibot “appraisal”, Mike. Those tools might have entertainment value, but are otherwise poor predictors of actual future transactions.

    Once this transaction gets reported on DNJournal and enters their database, Estibot will change their “appraisal”, to make it seem as if it’s a precise tool. But, there’s a huge difference between regurgitating known transactions and predicting out-of-sample unknown transactions — the latter is what most people care about.

  2. Domainer Extraordinaire says

    And I keep getting $5,000 offers for my 3 letter .coms.
    They paid $800 for QNBBank.com in July 2013.

  3. jose says

    don’t see the connection you are trying to establish.
    estibot as an automated tool that has to deal with so many factors gives some good insights. qmb.com for 12k is in the right order of magnitude.
    if you are dealing with an end-user you know that you can push the asking price a good way further but it is not easy to fetch vales above $50k even when you have an interested prospective buyer for your domain. for a random “low quality” LLL.com you can fetch 10-25k as current resale value. getting $1M for qmb.com makes it a gigantic outlier. there is no tool that could suggest this price and if it suggested everyone would cry “you’re crazy”.
    and why stop at $1M? why not $5M?

    • Peter says

      There is no premium or non-premium letter. Those people who split letters to such categories works same way as Estibot, totally wrong. As each domain name is unique, all letters belong to the same category.

  10. Michael Berkens says

    George my opinion on estibot.com is pretty well known and of course we published this piece a while back:

    http://www.thedomains.com/2012/11/02/marchexs-sales-prove-it-estibot-appraisals-are-worthless/

    On the other hand there are domain investors who use it as a guide even domain brokers so while we might laugh it off as only for entertainment purposes that is not industry wide.

    Point being is if you want big money for a domain you have to wait for THE right buyer not just a buyer.

  11. Trent says

    The market value is between $10k – $50k IMO, but it wasn’t just parked and sitting in a domainer’s portfolio. It was in use, and it was associated with banking and customer’s money. Personally, I am surprised they even sold it and let alone to another banking institution. That said, the premium was having to move off of the domain and rebrand on another. That is costly and isn’t worth it unless the offer is too good to refuse. Apparently the board felt the $1M offer was too good in comparison with the impact on their brand/infrastructure/customers.

  12. todd says

    Of course they overpaid for it. The original owners didn’t care if they sold it or not so threw out a number of 1 million to see if it sticks and it did. There wasn’t any special negotiation tactics but just dumb luck.

  14. George Kirikos says

    I find it interesting that this post generated 16+ comments, whereas the Invest.com transaction for a reported $5 million only generated 4 comments.

    I suppose that’s the difference between a Sunday night blog post, vs. a Friday afternoon one!

  16. George Kirikos says

    According to Qatar National Bank’s website, “For the nine months of 2014, the Group recorded net profit of QR8.0 billion (USD2.2 billion)”. So, $2.2 billion divided by 273 days (3/4 of a year) equals $8 million/day in profits. Thus, they paid for the domain name in 3 hours!

    • Andrea Paladini says

      Often the value of a domain is the price the buyer is willing to pay for it and not its “fundamental” or “intrinsic” value, so, as you said before, people have to wait for THE right buyer to get BIG bucks 🙂

  19. jose says

    many times the guys with more money are the less willing to spend. i’ve got companies with hundred of millions in revenue wasting my time because they don’t want to go into 6 figures. always complaint it being expensive, bla bla bla. sure, the right buyer can overpay but i can’t wait for the right buyer in all my domains. and the right guy may never come. why would anyone with a domain like qmb.com reasonably ask $1M for this domain? curious now: MHB would you ask 1 million?

  20. Michael Berkens says

    Todd

    And that is why they didn’t over pay for it

    Get that overpay crap out of your head.

    You know that license plates have sold for up to over $14 Million dollars in Qatar one sold this year for over $4 Million

    http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/qatari-license-plate-markets-in-everything.html

    These are not domainers there are people out there with real wealth.

    None of the people are in the domain businesses

    Frank would tell you himself he does not have wealth

    • Tony Lam says

      “Frank would tell you himself he does not have wealth”

      Please explain this. From all accounts, Frank gets $20M/yr in sales and another $20M in parking. That pales in comparison to “real wealth”?

    • todd says

      When I say overpay I mean that they paid about 20 times what most domain investors would have accepted for this domain. If you owned this domain and did not know who the buyer was I am sure you would have really thought about selling it if someone offered only 50k. Most would have accepted 50-100k for this name in a heartbeat and possibly less.

      Now jlc.com is an exceptional 3 letter because it ends in C. It is almost like having a two letter domain because we all know that A, I, and C are the best endings for these. It really becomes a two letter domain that ends in Corporation or Company so the possibilities are so much larger. So of course turning down 50k for it was a no-brainer.

  23. jose says

    @Kirikos, because everyone can grasp the value of Invest.com but not for QMB.com . the beauty and the beast with LLL is that it can mean anything or, most of the time, it can mean nothing. and in the middle we have speculation running high, pushing prices to levels not under “reasonable valuations”.

    for the right buyer, that has a specific use and interest for an LLL, there is no theoretical limit to the price that can be asked. but how do we coop with this unlimited scope? the fact that a company makes billions is not per se a guarantee that they will pay millions for a domain name. there is a tradeoff to be made when quoting a domain like this that involves some art. but many times what makes these outlier sales is a seller being damn lucky or because he had already got a good revenue from this business that can sit on the portfolio and keep asking for high values. MHB says it quotes his LLLs in the 6 figures. and is quoting these 6 figures since when? 5 years ago? 10 years ago? or only recently? in response to the increase in value for these kind of domains in the last year of because 6 figures is a general fair rule for valuating an asset like a domain name?

    if the story was “domainer sells QMB.com for $1M” that would be even greater news.

  24. Andrea Paladini says

    Probably there has been a little misunderstanding or I expressed myself incorrectly.
    When I said they overpaid for it, I meant that the buyer could have negotiated a better price, since, as far as I see, at the moment you can find LLL.com for purchase for 5 or 6 figures.
    I think two factors raised the bar here:
    1 – the fact that the seller knew who the buyer was, and its “purchasing power”;
    2 – the domain was in use as the seller main corporate website.
    I never said nor I never meant to say that Qatar National Bank (QNB Group) paid too much for what it purchased, because that can be easily considered as an average advertising investment for them, which probably would cost more if done in a different way.
    Secondly, I never said that this investment is “too much” for them or that they can’t afford it.
    That would simply be ridiculous.
    I mean, 1 mln $ are just peanuts for them, I know the Group, actually a couple of years ago I was close to working for QIA, who owns 50% of QNB, so I know what I’m talking about, no need to do a last-minute check of its P&L.
    @ Berkens: IMHO, your “license plates” example is not exactly fitting here, because that’s just part of those cyclical asset bubbles I’ve seen many times in my career, so I’m not surprised, there are always fools willing to spend huge sum of money for silly things (or worse) … that’s fools money … I’d suggest you to read, if you don’t know it, “A Short History of Financial Euphoria,” by John Kenneth Galbraith, From Tulips to Mergers: Speculative Psychology 😉

  25. Michael Berkens says

    Andrea

    I think the license plate is a perfect example

    The bank did not buy this domain for $1M as an investment.

    The guy who spent $14M on a license plate I’m sure didn’t buy it with the thoughts they could resell it for $25M

    In both cases the buyer wanted the asset and they had the money to buy it

    That is the point

    if someone wants something regardless of why they want it and can afford it, they will buy it.

    • Andrea Paladini says

      Mike,
      The Qatari bank purchased the domain to enjoy the benefits of owning the .com in terms of advertising, prestige, etc.
      When I say investments I mean marketing investments (aka marketing expenses).

      As regards the name plates example, I agree with you that “if someone wants something regardless of why they want it and can afford it, they will buy it.”, no doubt about that.
      In this case they are just like collectors, let’s say that art collectors are a similar category … and I see crazy prices here as well these days at recent auctions …
      This is just another sign of a huge assets bubble … some people never learn from past mistakes and from what history teaches us … 😉
      Fasten your seat belts and get ready for the bubble burst … coming soon …

  26. jose says

    I understand both Andrea Paladini and MHB arguments.

    MHB basically defends that the price is what people are willing to pay, independently of their rational or irrational reasons. I also understand from MHB comments and actions that he values domains above what most domainers do. MHB is a savvy investor but I think he is incorporating the asset bubble/mania into his reasoning.

    we are all moving our prices up. if people are paying more how could we not do it? but the case for LLL.com and particularly this sale is well worth to analyze. fact 1: the buyer bought the domain for a value he can make in several hours; fact 2: the seller sold an asset that was the basis of its online presence. given all this $1M was cheap or expensive? why stop at $1M? why not $5M? if the reasoning is the buyer has lots of money and the seller doesn’t have any particular reason to sell then the sale was cheap.

    that doesn’t mean anything however to the value of a random LLL.com, much less to the quality of Estibot valuations! in MHO it’s nonsense trying to compare things and, into some extension, saying that any LLL.com values at 6 figures it’s also aligning with the bubble logic.

    i get it. it’s a short domain. it’s scarce. it’s memorable. and 6 figures is nothing for someone who wants to be recognized online. but all this is possible only because of a building bubble. when you get hit three or four times with your price at 6 figures you will move the price to mid 6 figures. but if we all stick with these high value mentality 99% of sales would not occur. everyone would think that their domains are worth a lot more because you can find any justification to do so in this market. if someone wants your domain, it does not matter much why. and if he wants it then he can and must pay a lot of money.

    what is a lot of money? well, if we know the prospective buyer income we can target at a value proportional to that wealth. but this reasoning is also somewhat faulty. much often the guys with more money are the ones less willing to spend. “they do not understand the web and the value of domains” it’s what i usually hear. maybe it’s true but most domains sell outside that logic, when people get more reasonable.

    MHB ask 6 figures for any LLL. does it mean he his right? if you look at the market sales you rarely find a sale at 6 figures ( i know that some sales aren’t public but they are still low frequency to make any difference). Estibot typically values random LLLs currently within 10k-50k. guess what: most LLL sales are made at this level. and this include end-user sales.

    now, we cannot also sell us short. that is the extreme case at the other end. but we must not also be lost in the mania. like Andrea Paladini is saying, we are going to a big downfall. it is not a matter of why or how. it’s a matter of when, and if we are cold in our thinking we can sense it is very near. when that event hit us all, 6 figures for a random lll.com will look like day dreaming. because we all have bills to pay and we all like to cash in some profits now and then and when all people start to feel the same pressure the perspective of things changes.

    it took 20 years for any random lll to look like it can be valued at 6 figures without one being looked like crazy. but just because one can be sold at that value doesn’t mean that all can or will sell at that value. my biggest lll sale was at low 6 figures, but i know it is an outlier. i know that to get the most of a domain one needs to wait long and have some “crazyness” in its valuation. and i also know that that can be more easily done if you have already build a portfolio and cash in some good profits in the past. you can then sit on your hands and hope that inflation does it’s work and that the guy with that specially interest comes knocking to your door. but that has nothing to do with sound valuations of current market values. Estibot has some problems and i also don’t like they messing with the valuation when a sale of a particular domain is made (in these respect however they are saying: someone in this market thought that it is worth that and a sale happened, so the domain has that value). but it is a good piece of software that gives good insights to the value of domains.

  29. Kassey says

    Mike is right. Sell to THE right buyer not just a buyer. I’ll add: study the potential buyers of your domain names. Can they be used as a corporate identity on the Internet? QNB.com is a perfect upgrade for Qatar National Bank from their QNB.com.qa. They are already running a global business and QNB.com is the best choice to represent their corporate identity. And, they have lots of money to spend for something very critical to their business – a brand.

  30. jose says

    do you know who your buyers really are? don’t they use brokers? or use second line managers not directly connected with the main business for which the domain is for? or even use fake information?