Web.com reported their earnings for the third quarter this month and provided information about the registration business. David L Brown of Web.com reported that the increase in domain names has led to a reduction in the amount of income they were able to generate. Overall registrations have declined at the same time. Non-domain name registration services have also been hurt as companies offering package deals at rock-bottom prices. Web.com took aggressive steps to support its share price after their earnings report by starting a $100 million stock buy back plan. That plan will purchase 12% of the company’s outstanding stock.
When Google made the announcement that it will start selling domain names earlier this year, Web.com stock fell 20%. It didn’t help when the company missed its earnings for the second quarter either. GoDaddy operates in the same sectors as Web.com. GoDaddy’s auction business and registration business Afternic have not reported sales since the company filed for their IPO. But those numbers could be similar to Web.com sales making their IPO less attractive than if sales were increasing.