Minds + Machines Group Ltd (LON:MMX) reported today the company’s financial results for the 1st half of 2015.
Minds + Machines swung to a pretax loss for the first half of 2015 “due to it seeing a lower gain from participating in generic top-level domain auctions”
Minds + Machines reported a pretax loss of $3.7 million for the half year to ending June 30th, from a pretax profit of $4.9 million, “mostly as a result of lower profit from participating in generic top-level domain auctions”.
In the previous year the company saw a $11.9 million profit from participating in losing new gTLD auctions, whereas in the first half of 2015 this profit was just $4.5 million.
However Minds + Machines revenue from operating new gTLD strings were $1.97m for the first 6 months of 2015 up from billings $449,000 in the first half of last year,.
At the end of June, Minds + Machines said 217,200 domains were under management, representing 3.43% of the new gTLD market.
Minds + Machines said it has cut $2.24 million of annualized costs since late May, and has identified a further $700,000 of costs to cut.
“The second half of 2015 will see the launches of .law, .abogado and .miami, while there is also the prospect of renewals from gTLDs launched last year. Early indications for .London point to renewal rates being significantly above industry norms”
At the end of June the company had cash of $48.3 Million on hand.
Minds + Machines authorized a stock repurchase programme “that could see £15 Milliojn of shares bought back in the open market over the next 12 months”
Chief Executive Officer Antony Van Couvering is quoted as saying:
“While first half results were impacted by significant operating costs, we have reduced these costs dramatically in the third quarter of 2015, as will become apparent in future results. The board is firmly committed to achieving cross-over to operating profitability in 2016 and to fully monetising our excellent TLD portfolio”
Other new gTLD’s that Minds + Machines still has applications for include .INC, .LLC, .CPA, .Gay
Shares in Minds + Machines were up 5.9% at 8.60 pence Tuesday morning and has a market cap of £73.15 m
the first crack on the gTLD bust
Business model of earning a living by losing auctions has come to an end.
Poor performance, and they’re purported to be one of the “shining lights” of the new gTLD game. Makes you wonder how many operators will go bust in the next few years.
Seb
I wouldn’t say it has come to an end but is coming to an end there are still a few to go including possibly .web and .music
“Minds + Machines authorized a stock repurchase programme “that could see £15 Milliojn of shares bought back in the open market over the next 12 months”
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A desperate act. It is not worth 15 million pounds (half of their cash holdings) to try and prop up the stock price for 12 months. People would be wise to abandon ship during that period.
You can go all in and “lose” an auction, if you have massive cash on hand. But with a diminishing kitty-kash, it’s going to be harder to pull this off with the other bidder(s)
M+M applied to .eco as well. .eco prevailed CPE but M+M and other applicants are challenging that decision in accountability procedures; they are likely to loose and end up only spending in legal fees in getting nothing either settling private contention or selling domain names, but that is still unknown at this point.
I have several new gtld’s, one from M&M.
Bottom line is, I transferred my single M&M domain to uniregistry.com where I feel safe and sound.
I prefer not to name the domain but since the trademark was cancelled in the USA i feel it may have some worth at some time?
Groovy
gtlds are such crapolla. Why would anyone think otherwise?