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February 21st, 2008 by 
Jay Westerdal
A few weeks ago, during the Tucows fourth quarter and year-end 2007 results conference call, Tucows President and CEO, Elliot Noss, made reference to the fact that Tucows has been building up an extensive portfolio of domain names over the past few years. He promised to provide some transparency into those domain holdings in the coming weeks. Just today they released details about the size and makeup of their domain name holdings, including a list of 100 “Gems” of the Portfolio. You can read more about the about the Tucows Portfolio online as they are starting to open up about the domains.
Tucows commented,
“Our strategy to acquire expiring domain names differs from that of some other large Registrars who have focused on domain name auctions. Tucows believes that there is substantial value in holding on to these domain names, both in terms of monetization through pay-per-click advertising, but also in terms of the resale or lease of high-value domains to individuals and businesses that understand the intrinsic value of a high-quality domain name.”
My take on all this is, Tucows is building real value. Once main-stream investors factor in how much the Tucows portfolio is worth, the price of Tucows stock should rise accordingly. However, I think the stock is well under-valued and will stay that way for a while. Main stream investors are always late to the game. The market cap on Tucows is currently at $50MM, almost an all-time low. In the 2001 bubble Tucows reached just over $15 a share, it is now down to $0.68 a share. If Tucows continues buying up valuable domain names at registration prices I can see the value of the company doubling in the next 2 years. However that is only my opinion and “no” I don’t own any shares of Tucows.
I started to browse their portfolio using some DomainTools magic and they have some killer domains: SkateBoarders.com, Francisco.com, Marker.com, COO.com, Hardy.com, Liberals.com, Macy.com, Marlin.com, Nickels.com, Rhea.com, Coward.com, Crochet.com, GreyMarket.com, GoldenRetrievers.com & Retrievers.com.
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Posted in Tucows |
February 21st, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Even if the stock price doubled, that would only put it back up to its 52 week high.
Besides the domain name assets, Tucows wholesale registrar business produces substantial consistent and growing cash flow.
Not sure what it will take to unlock the value of this company in the eyes of mainstream investors, but recently it seems like Tucows is taking some important steps to make this happen.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:01 pm
It is sure their stock price will rise (More than twice as per my opinion - if a $10 domain sells for 100,000 bucks after a few years , they why not? )if they acquire domains at registration prices. The company has acquired much more single word .coms which are sure market fires. Even then i feel they have to employ some niche experts to register keyword domains, this will tremendously increase their market value . I personally feel that 50% of the 100 gems is nice but what is the situation of the remaining in 1,50,000 Domains.It is not big thing for companies like Tucows.But Tremendous care is required for small domain portfolio builders like us as we didnt have a branded exposure like Tucows
Good Luck,
B.K.Saravanan,
For http://www.collisiondomains.com
February 23rd, 2008 at 2:49 am
mjziel Says:
“Not sure what it will take to unlock the value of this company in the eyes of mainstream investors”
Redesigning their website would definitely help. Tucows is one of the biggest domain name registrar, (see: Tucows is the second largest provider of domain name registrations in the world with more than 7.8 million domain names under management) yet there is no link, reference to this service on their website…
Levi / http://www.askingprice.info
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:43 am
It’s a sad day in the domain industry for the little guy when we praise a registrar for warehousing names.
February 25th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
JMJ, agreed.
One think I’d like to mention is that Tucows is no supporting the rebranded Registerfly.com as Regfly.com. I’ve personally sent a request to Dave Woroch asking for an explanation and they have failed to respond.
So we have a large registrar not only banking domain names but also supporting known pirates in the industry.
http://www.registerflies.com
February 25th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Jay,
I am interested in their top 1000 names. I am a shareholder and a HUGE advocate of Tucows. Can you post what other names they own as well. I know they owns boystown.com and lemons.com
They should have many more amazing names….any help showing the would be greatly appreciated.
February 26th, 2008 at 12:17 am
Jay,
Nice work you did there by finding some extra killer domains.
Based on the pr of Tucows that mentions they own :
1. over 1000 gems
2. 39.000 surnames
3. 22.000 brandable names
4. 88.000 direct navigation names
With your experience what total value would you estimate this portfolio would be worth ?
Also Tucows has recently sold a few domain names thru the TRAFFIC auction , do you have any idea which names and at what prices ?
Any other names that you can find that Tucows owns are welcome.
Cheers,
Zelion
February 28th, 2008 at 6:07 am
“It’s a sad day in the domain industry for the little guy when we praise a registrar for warehousing names.”
……………………………..
^ So True, my take on this is that they are more or less stealing the domains and nobody has the balls to stop them. They are “supposed” to be providing a service, they have NO LEGAL right to the domains they keep.
Tucows is accredited by ICANN
ICANN RULES - 4.2.7. prohibitions on
warehousing of or speculation in domain names by registries or registrars.
ICANN - Grow some Balls and deal with it !
February 28th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Tucows commented,
“Our strategy to acquire expiring domain names differs from that of some other large Registrars who have focused on domain name auctions. Tucows believes that there is substantial value in holding on to these domain names, both in terms of monetization through pay-per-click advertising, but also in terms of the resale or lease of high-value domains to individuals and businesses that understand the intrinsic value of a high-quality domain name.”
No S*** sherlock ! You’re just a Thief in a suit !