Go Daddy touts online potential in IPO filing

Who doesn’t have a website these days? Plenty of small business, according to Go Daddy, the domain name registrar looking to convince investors of its untapped growth potential ahead of a public stock offering.

Even though Go Daddy already has 57 million domain names under management and 12 million customers, the company contends only about half of the nation’s 28 million small businesses have a Web site. In addition, Go Daddy’s 57 million domain’s represent about 21% of the 270 million domain names registered world wide.

Persuading more small businesses to get on the Internet and gaining share from other registrars represent growth opportunities for Go Daddy as the company looks to become profitable. The company grew revenues 24% to $1.13 billion during the fiscal year ended December 31, 2013, a period in which it reduced its net loss to $199 million from $279 million.

The other big growth opportunity on the horizon involves a potential flurry of registration activity related to the release of 700 new top level domains (TLDs) to be released by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) over the next several years.

“These newly introduced TLDs include names that are geared toward professions (e.g. .photography), personal interests (e.g. .guru), geographies (e.g. .london, .nyc and .vegas) and just plain fun (e.g. .ninja),” Go Daddy indicated in its registration statement filed with the Securities and Exhange Commission. “Additionally, we believe there is great potential in the emerging secondary market to match buyers to sellers who already own the domains. We are continuing to invest in search, discovery and recommendation tools and transfer protocols for the combined markets of primary and secondary domains.”

Go Daddy was founded in 1997