Stock investment firm Trefis.com issued a report on Verisign (VRSN) today entitled “The New Domain Name Game” and concluded when it comes to new gTLD’s (new domain name extensions):
“It appears that VeriSign doesn’t have much to worry about, at the moment, when it comes to the introduction of new domain name extensions.
“Even though the company’s market share has been reduced (52.5% in 2007 to 46.6% in 2014) and will probably continue to decline in the future due to higher competition and more alternatives, new gTLDs may not turn out to be the threat that was once feared.”
Here is more about Trefis:
“Trefis.com was founded by MIT Engineers and former Wall Street analysts who realized that most people do not understand the seemingly familiar companies around them.
We research hundreds of facts to come up with the Trefis price estimate for each company’s stock, in order to provide you with a solid starting point.
We don’t expect to have a magic potion, or guarantee that the market price will converge to the Trefis price tomorrow, or ever. Rather, by putting a well-thought-out stake in the ground, we aim to provide you with a solid starting point so you can make better informed investment decisions.””
Our models are rigorous and deep, but we believe it is equally important to make them fun and easy-to-understand. When you type in a company ticker or name, we show you in a single snapshot what product lines and divisions of a company really matter.
We’d like to welcome Trefis to the domain community. And since it appears they’re going to write reports, we’re offering to help get them up to speed on new TLDs. For example:
– Barclays, Marriott, Apple, Google and BMW have all transitioned from .com to new TLDs.
– Registrations in new TLDs recently topped 8 million.
– The number of new TLDs on the market has increased from 400 to 768.
Hopefully once Trefis gets up to speed we’ll see some interesting reports.
The Trefis article seems strangely out of date, with some figures that are off and claiming no major brands are using gTLDs. No major brands other than the likes of Google and Apple? Doesn’t fill you with confidence.
.com registry sales has little to nothing to fear from new gTLDs; .net on the other hand might really see the pressure from other options, but .tv and .cc might get some traction from the “not-com” movement. Overall result is negative, since .com wholesale price is frozen, but nothing that would make them get into panic mode. Just a bit less of earnings per share.