GoDaddy.com has sold yet another 2 letter .com domain name and this time it was MW.com to a Chinese buyer.
This has been a revolving door for GoDaddy and its NameFind domain portfolio in late 2016. This is the 9th, 2 letter .com domain name sale. The prior 2 letter .com domain sales were:
FH.com
JC.com
FJ.com
TS.com
GK.com
GH.com
JG.com
LF.com
GoDaddy obtained 24, 2 letter .com domain names from the Elite Domains domain name portfolio it acquired for $45 million in April 2016. That leaves 15 in the portfolio to date after they sold the 9. Considering there are only 676 total 2 letter .com domains, with most owned by large corporations, it’s not all that common to see these sell.
One thing I’m not a fan of, GoDaddy appears to be selling off many of its great domain names and very liquid domains, not long after obtaining them. Considering they sold 9 in 8 months with the 2 letter .com’s. The majority went to other domain investors and not end users.
It was days after acquiring the Traffic Names Ltd portfolio and GoDaddy dumped 14.com and all 4 NNN .com domains it acquired with the portfolio. Shortly after acquiring Worldwide Media’s portfolio, that contained over 100, 3 letter .com domains, those were dumped off to other domain name investors pretty quickly. Over 70 LNN .com domains were also sold in a bulk lot out of the Traffic Names portfolio shortly after obtaining it. Many large lots of LLL .net domains were dumped off and more.
I understand it’s nice to get some $ back right away but some of these need to be held on to for long term investment and GoDaddy appears to be selling off many it should be holding.
To note, GoDaddy also sold 2 letter .net domain name MN.net the same day as MW.com to a different Chinese buyer.
There is a ccTLD .mw for Malawi.
GD is a billion dollar company and has different profit objectives than a long term domain investor. I would assume management needs to prove to shareholders and BOD that they are getting quick ROI on their portfolio acquisitions to continue to allocate capital to this strategy. GD’s valuation (market cap) is up there. They need to show material revenue growth YOY. Just my 2 cents.
Agree with your perspective but understand theirs as well. Selling to other domain investors still puts these domain in stronger hands. Maybe not as strong as end user but clearly if somebody wanted to buy one of those domains from the new owner they would be looking at a 25-50% mark up, minimum. Carrying costs only $9/yr and there are very few LL.com, NN.com, NNN.com domains (1,774 combined).