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| DMD > SEC Filings for DMD > Form 10-K on 5-Mar-2013 | All Recent SEC Filings |
5-Mar-2013
Annual Report
The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of
operations should be read in conjunction with Part II, Item 6, "Selected
Financial Data" and our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in
this Annual Report on Form 10-K. In addition to historical data, this discussion
contains forward-looking statements about our business, operations and financial
performance based on current expectations that involve risks, uncertainties and
assumptions. Our actual results may differ materially from those discussed in
the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including but not
limited to those discussed in "Disclosure Regarding Forward-Looking Statements"
and Item I, Part 1A, "Risk Factors" included elsewhere in this Annual Report on
Form 10-K.
We are a diversified Internet media and domain services company. We have developed a leading Internet-based model for the professional creation and distribution of high-quality, commercially valuable, long-lived content at scale, and we operate the world's largest wholesale registrar and the world's second largest registrar overall. Our business is comprised of two service offerings: Content & Media and Registrar. Our Content & Media offering is engaged in creating media content, primarily consisting of text articles and videos, and delivering content along with our social media and monetization tools to our owned and operated websites and mobile applications and to our network of customer websites and their mobile applications. Our Content & Media service offering also includes a portfolio of websites primarily containing advertising listings, which we refer to as undeveloped websites. Our Registrar service is the world's largest wholesale registrar of Internet domain names and the world's second largest registrar overall, based on the number of names under management, and provides domain name registration and related value-added services. We are also a leading participant in ICANN's, significant expansion of the number of generic Top Level Domain ("gTLDs"), which is expected to result in the delegation on new gTLDs commencing in 2013.
Our principal operations and decision-making functions are located in the United States. We report our financial results as one operating segment, with two distinct service offerings. Our operating results are regularly reviewed by our chief operating decision maker on a consolidated basis, principally to make decisions about how we allocate our resources and to measure our consolidated operating performance. Together, our service offerings provide us with proprietary data that facilitate the creation of commercially valuable, long-lived content, which we combine with broad distribution and targeted monetization capabilities. We currently generate the vast majority of our Content & Media revenue through the sale of advertising, and to a lesser extent through subscriptions to our social media applications and licensing and sales of select content and service offerings. Substantially all of our Registrar revenue is derived from domain name registration and related value-added service subscriptions. Our chief operating decision maker regularly reviews revenue for each of our Content & Media and Registrar service offerings in order to gain a greater understanding of the key business metrics driving our business. Accordingly, we report Content & Media and Registrar revenue separately.
In February 2013, we announced that our board of directors authorized a plan to
explore separating the Company into two independent, publicly-traded companies:
a pure-play Internet-based content and media company and a pure-play domain
services company (hereinafter referred to as the "Proposed Business
Separation"). We anticipate that the Proposed Business Separation will be
structured as a tax-free pro rata distribution to stockholders of new publicly
traded shares in the new domain services company. Consummation of the Proposed
Business Separation is subject to final approval by our board of directors.
Consummation of the Proposed Business Separation also is subject to satisfaction
of several conditions, including confirmation of the transaction's tax-free
treatment, receipt of listing approval, and the filing and effectiveness of a
registration statement on Form 10 with the SEC. We have not yet finalized all of
the details of the Proposed Business Separation and there is no assurance that
the Proposed Business Separation as described herein will occur.
In January 2011, we completed our initial public offering and received proceeds, net of underwriters discounts but before deducting offering expenses, of $81.8 million from the issuance of 5.2 million shares of common stock. As a result of the initial public offering, all shares of our convertible preferred stock converted into 61.7 million shares of common stock and warrants to purchase common stock or convertible preferred stock net exercised into 0.5 million shares of common stock.
For the years ended December 31, 2010, 2011 and 2012, we reported revenue of $253 million, $325 million and $381 million, respectively. For the years ended December 31, 2010, 2011 and 2012, our Content & Media offering accounted for
61%, 63% and 65% of our total revenue, respectively, and our Registrar service accounted for 39%, 37% and 35% of our total revenue, respectively.
We regularly review a number of business metrics, including the following key metrics, to evaluate our business, measure the performance of our business model, identify trends impacting our business, determine resource allocations, formulate financial projections and make strategic business decisions. Measures which we believe are the primary indicators of our performance are as follows:
Content & Media Metrics
• page views: We define page views as the total number of web pages viewed across (1) our owned and operated websites and/or (2) our network of customer websites, to the extent that the viewed customer web pages host the Company's monetization, social media and/or content services. Page views are primarily tracked through internal systems, such as our Omniture web analytics tool, contain estimates for our customer websites using our social media tools and may use data compiled from certain customer websites. We periodically review and refine our methodology for monitoring, gathering, and counting page views in an effort to improve the accuracy of our measure.
• RPM: We define RPM as Content & Media revenue per one thousand page views.
Registrar Metrics
• domain: We define a domain as an individual domain name paid for by a third-party customer where the domain name is managed through our Registrar service offering. Beginning July 1, 2011, the number of net new domains has been adjusted to include only new registered domains added to our platform for which we have recognized revenue. This metric does not include any of the Company's owned and operated websites.
• average revenue per domain: We calculate average revenue per domain by dividing Registrar revenues for a period by the average number of domains registered in that period. The average number of domains is the simple average of the number of domains at the beginning and end of the period.
The following table sets forth additional performance highlights of key business metrics for the periods presented:
2010 to 2011 to
2011 2012
Year ended December 31, % %
2010 2011 2012 Change Change
Content & Media Metrics (1)
Owned & operated
Page views (in millions) 8,234 10,378 13,192 26 % 27 %
RPM $ 13.45 $ 15.14 $ 13.53 13 % (11 )%
Network of customer websites
Page views (in millions) 13,155 17,436 18,989 33 % 9 %
RPM $ 3.20 $ 2.77 $ 3.58 (13 )% 29 %
RPM ex-TAC $ 2.28 $ 2.06 $ 2.55 (10 )% 24 %
Registrar Metrics (1)
End of Period # of Domains (2) (in
millions) 11.0 12.7 13.7 15 % 8 %
Average Revenue per Domain (2) $ 9.96 $ 10.08 $ 10.19 1 % 1 %
(2) Beginning July 1, 2011, the number of net new domains has been adjusted to include only new registered domains added to our platform for which we have recognized revenue. Excluding the impact of this change, end of period domains at
December 31, 2012 would have increased 13% and average revenue per domain during the year ended December 31, 2012 would have decreased 4%, each compared to the corresponding prior-year period.
To date, we have derived the majority of our revenue through the sale of advertising in connection with our Content & Media service offering and through domain name registration subscriptions in our Registrar service offering. Our advertising revenue is primarily generated by advertising networks, which include both performance-based Internet advertising, such as cost-per-click where an advertiser pays only when a user clicks on its advertisement, and display Internet advertising, where an advertiser pays when the advertising is displayed. For the year ended December 31, 2012, the majority of our advertising revenue was generated by our relationship with Google. We deliver online advertisements provided by Google on our owned and operated websites as well as on certain of our customer websites where we share a portion of the advertising revenue. Additionally, we recognized significant revenue from our YouTube multi-channel premium video initiative during 2012. We do not expect to generate significant revenue under this agreement in 2013. For the years ended December 31, 2011 and 2012, approximately 33% and 38%, respectively, of our total consolidated revenue was derived from our advertising and content arrangements with Google. Google maintains the direct relationships with the advertisers and provides us with cost-per-click and display advertising services.
Growth in Content & Media revenue is principally dependent upon growth in page views and RPMs. Our recent growth in page views has been primarily due to an increase in the number of visitors to our library of content published in 2011 and earlier, the increase in the amount of our content distributed to our network of content partners, and traffic growth from mobile devices. We believe that there are opportunities to grow our page views by creating and publishing more content in a greater variety of formats on our owned and operated sites as well as expanding our network of customer websites. Our RPMs are subject to changes in the online advertising marketplace, where we expect ad unit price volatility, which could include lower rates received for certain ad units. Currently, our Content & Media revenue is primarily advertising-based; however, we believe there is an opportunity to diversify our revenue by expanding our paid content services, including offering paid subscriptions to access certain of our media content.
Google, the largest provider of search engine referrals to the majority of the Company's websites, regularly deploys changes to its search engine algorithms, some of which have led the Company to experience fluctuations in the total number of Google search referrals to its owned and operated and network of customer websites. Other search engines may deploy similar changes. In 2011, the overall impact of these changes on the Company's owned and operated websites was negative primarily due to a decline in traffic to eHow.com, the Company's largest website. In 2012, Google continued to make changes to its search engine algorithms; however, we do not believe that these changes in the aggregate had an overall negative impact on our traffic. In response to the changes in search engine algorithms in 2011, the Company performed an evaluation of its existing content library to identify potential improvements in its content creation and distribution platform. As a result of this evaluation, the Company elected to remove certain content assets from service, resulting in approximately $5.9 million and $2.1 million of accelerated amortization expense in the years ended December 31, 2011 and 2012, respectively.
We intend to evolve and continuously improve our content creation and distribution platform. During 2011 and 2012, we made certain improvements to this platform including establishment of more stringent criteria for the admission of content creators, an increase in our investment in video, long-form content and images, publication of content directed at international markets and in languages other than English, addition of content production algorithms targeted toward ensuring that each additional unit of content published is unique in relation to existing content units, as well as an expansion of the distribution of our content to our network of customer websites. As we made these improvements to our content creation and distribution platform, we reduced the level of our overall investment in media content in 2012 when compared to 2011. Based on our assessment of the results of these improvements, we increased our investment in media content over the course of 2012. We expect this trend to continue and anticipate increased media content expenditures in 2013 compared to 2012, including additional investment in short-form articles on our owned and operated sites including eHow.com, growth in content published on our network of customer websites and creation of new content formats, including paid content, designed to further diversify our content offering.
There can be no assurance that these or any future changes that may be implemented by the Company, by search engines to their algorithms and search methodologies, or by consumers in their web usage habits will not adversely impact the carrying value, estimated useful life or intended use of our long-lived assets. The Company will continue to monitor these changes as well as any future changes and emerging trends in search engine algorithms and methodologies, including the resulting impact that these changes may have on future operating results, the economic performance of the Company's long-lived assets and in
its assessment as to whether significant changes in circumstances might provide an indication of potential impairment of the carrying value of its long-lived assets, including its media content and goodwill arising from acquisitions. The growth in our Registrar revenue is dependent upon our ability to attract and retain customers to our Registrar platform through competitive pricing on domain registrations and value added services. Beginning in the first quarter of 2010 and extending through the third quarter of 2011, we added several customers with large volumes of domains to our Registrar platform. This resulted in fluctuations in our average revenue per domain over these periods, from which we only recognized revenue on a portion of these domain names while deferring revenue recognition on the remainder. Beginning July 1, 2011, we adjusted the number of net new domains to include only new registered domains added to our platform for which we have recognized revenue. Excluding the impact of this change, average revenue per domain during the year ended December 31, 2012 would have decreased 4% compared to the corresponding prior-year period, primarily due to the acquisition of Name.com on December 31, 2012 for which we did not recognize any revenue in 2012. In the near term, we anticipate our average revenue per domain to continue to fluctuate as a result of an increasing mix of large volume customers and the recent acquisition of Name.com. Due in part to the higher mix of large, higher volume customers in 2012 as compared to 2011, we also expect that the associated service costs as a percentage of revenue will increase when compared to our historical results.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, has approved a framework for the significant expansion of the number of gTLDs, which is expected to result in the delegation of new gTLDs commencing in 2013. We believe that such expansion, once completed, could result in an increase in the number of domains registered on our platform commencing in the second half of 2013. In addition, we believe that the New gTLD Program could also provide us with new revenue opportunities commencing in 2013, which include operating the back-end infrastructure for new gTLD registries and/or owning one or more gTLDs in our own right.
During the year ended December 31, 2012, the Company paid $18.2 million for certain gTLD applications under the New gTLD Program. Payments for gTLD applications represent amounts paid directly to ICANN and third parties in the pursuit of the Company's ownership of certain gTLD operator rights. While there can be no assurance that the Company will be awarded any gTLDs, the Company capitalizes payments made for gTLD applications that are determined to embody probable economic benefit, which are included in other long-term assets at December 31, 2012. During 2013 as part of the New gTLD Program, the Company may receive partial cash refunds for certain gTLD applications, and to the extent the Company elects to sell or dispose of certain gTLD applications throughout the process, it may also incur gains or losses on amounts invested. Gains on the sale of the Company's interest in gTLDs will be recognized when realized, while losses will be recognized when deemed probable. Upon the delegation of operator rights for each gTLD by ICANN, which the Company expects to commence in 2013, gTLD application fees will be reclassified as finite lived intangible assets and amortized on a straight-line basis over their estimated useful life. Other costs incurred by the Company as part of its gTLD initiative and not directly attributable to the acquisition of gTLD operator rights are expensed as incurred.
We expect to incur between $5 million and $10 million of formation expenses related to the New gTLD Program in 2013, and the total amount of our investment at the completion of the New gTLD Program could be substantially higher or lower than the amounts invested to date. Revenue is not expected to commence until the third quarter of 2013 at the earliest.
Our service costs, the largest component of our operating expenses, can vary from period to period, particularly as a percentage of revenue, based upon the mix of the underlying Content & Media and Registrar services revenues we generate. In the near term, we expect that the period-over-period growth in our Content & Media revenue will exceed the growth in our Registrar revenue, which would typically provide for higher operating margins. However, we expect that service costs will increase in 2013 compared to 2012 due to the growth of higher volume, lower margin Registrar customers offset by a substantial reduction of costs associated with our premium multi-channel initiative with YouTube. We believe that these factors, together with costs associated with our preparation for new gTLDs becoming available for registration later in 2013, will constrain our operating margin growth in the short-term as we increase our investment in new business initiatives to support future growth.
Our content studio identifies and creates online text articles and videos through a community of freelance creative professionals and is core to our business strategy and long-term growth initiatives. Historically, we have made substantial investments in our platform to support our community of freelance creative professionals and the growth of our content production and distribution and expect to continue to make such investments. As we develop new content formats, we may not be able to attract and retain qualified creative professionals to produce such new content at scale, which may adversely impact our ability to execute against emerging business opportunities or retain existing content creators.
For the year ended December 31, 2012, more than 90% of our revenue has been derived from websites and customers located in the United States. While our content is primarily targeted towards English-speaking users in the United States today,
we believe that there is an opportunity in the longer term for us to create content targeted to users outside of the United States and thereby increase our revenue generated from countries outside of the United States. We plan to further expand our operations internationally to address this opportunity by launching new websites and expanding our existing web properties such as eHow en Español and eHow Brasil. As we expand our business internationally, we may incur additional expenses associated with this growth initiative.
Basis of Presentation Revenue
Our revenue is derived from our Content & Media and Registrar service offerings.
Content & Media Revenue
We currently generate substantially all of our Content & Media revenue through the sale of advertising, and to a lesser extent through subscriptions to our social media applications and select content and service offerings. Articles and videos, each of which we refer to as a content unit, generate revenue both directly and indirectly. Direct revenue is directly attributable to a content unit, such as advertisements, including sponsored advertising links, display advertisements and in-text advertisements, on the same webpage on which the content is displayed. Beginning in 2013, we also expect to generate direct revenue from paid content subscription services. Indirect revenue is derived primarily by our content library, but is not directly attributable to a specific content unit. Indirect revenue includes advertising revenue generated from our owned and operated websites' home pages (e.g., home page of eHow.com), topic category webpages (e.g., home and garden category page), user generated article pages that feature content that was not acquired through our proprietary content acquisition process, and to a lesser extent, certain subscription-based revenue. Our revenue generating advertising arrangements, for both our owned and operated websites and our network of customer websites, include cost-per-click performance-based advertising; display advertisements where revenue is dependent upon the number of page views; and lead generating advertisements where revenue is dependent upon users registering for, or purchasing or demonstrating interest in, advertisers' products and services. We generate revenue from advertisements displayed alongside our content offered to consumers across a broad range of topics and categories on our owned and operated websites and on certain customer websites. Our advertising revenue also includes revenue derived from cost-per-click advertising links we place on undeveloped websites owned by us, which we acquire and sell on a regular basis, and certain of our customers. To a lesser extent, we also generate revenue from our subscription-based offerings, which include our social media applications deployed on our network of customer websites and subscriptions to premium content or services offered on certain of our owned and operated websites.
Where we enter into revenue sharing arrangements with our customers, such as those relating to IndieClick and our undeveloped customer websites, and when we are considered the primary obligor, we report the underlying revenue on a gross basis in our consolidated statements of operations, and record these revenue-sharing payments to our customers as traffic acquisition costs, or TAC, which are included in service costs. In circumstances where we distribute our content on third-party websites and the customer acts as the primary obligor we recognize revenue on a net basis.
Registrar Revenue
Our Registrar revenue is principally comprised of registration fees charged to resellers and consumers in connection with new, renewed and transferred domain name registrations. In addition, our Registrar also generates revenue from the sale of other value-added services that are designed to help our customers easily build, enhance and protect their domains, including security services, e-mail accounts and web-hosting. Finally, we generate revenue from fees related to auction services we provide to facilitate the selling of third-party owned domains. Our Registrar revenue varies based upon the number of domains registered, the rates we charge our customers and our ability to sell value-added services. We market our Registrar wholesale services under our eNom brand, and our retail registration services under the eNomCentral and Name.com brands, among others.
We expect to commence recognizing revenue from our gTLD initiative in the second half of 2013. The amount, as well as the timing of revenue, is uncertain and is dependent upon whether our applications for gTLDs are approved by ICANN, the outcome of negotiations or auctions to acquire the operating rights for gTLDs applications contested with other participants, and the continued progress of the overall ICANN new gTLD initiative.
Operating Expenses
Operating expenses consist of service costs, sales and marketing, product development, general and administrative, and amortization of intangible assets. Included in our operating expenses are stock-based compensation and depreciation expenses associated with our capital expenditures.
Service costs primarily consist of: fees paid to registries and ICANN associated with domain registrations; advertising revenue recognized by us and shared with others as a result of our revenue-sharing arrangements, such as TAC and content creator revenue-sharing arrangements; Internet connection and co-location charges and other platform operating expenses including depreciation of the systems and hardware used to build and operate our Content & Media platform and Registrar service; personnel costs related to in-house editorial, customer service and information technology; and certain content production costs. Our service costs are dependent on a number of factors, including the number of page views generated across our platform and the volume of domain registrations and value-added services supported by our Registrar service. In the near term, we expect higher overall registration costs as a percentage of revenue due to the recent growth in higher volume, lower margin Registrar customers and the Name.com acquisition as well as increased costs associated with our investment in new business initiatives in 2013, including our preparation for new gTLDs. We also anticipate increased traffic acquisition costs due to growth in network revenue and that content production costs will comprise a lower proportion of total service costs in 2013 compared to 2012, due to the substantial reduction in costs (and revenue) associated with our premium multi-channel video initiative with YouTube.
Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of sales and marketing personnel costs, sales support, public relations, advertising, marketing and general promotional expenditures. Fluctuations in our sales and marketing expenses are generally the result of our efforts to support the growth in our Content & Media . . .
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