22nd Sep 2015 10:32
LONDON (Alliance News) - Minds + Machines Group Ltd Tuesday said it remains committed to moving into operating profitability in 2016, as it reported a swing to a pretax loss for its first half due to it seeing a lower gain from participating in generic top-level domain auctions.
A generic top level domain is the suffix on a web address, such as .com, and the Internet Corporate for Assigned Names and Numbers has recently allowed for a cacophony of new generic top level domains to be launched.
The owner and operator of internet top-level domains reported a pretax loss of USD3.7 million for the half year to end-June, swung from a pretax profit of USD4.9 million, mostly as a result of lower profit from participating in generic top-level domain auctions, which offset a rise in revenue to USD3.6 million from USD113,000.
In the previous year the company saw a USD11.9 million profit from participating in the auctions, whereas in the first half of 2015 this profit was USD4.5 million. The ownership of contested top-level domains has primarily been resolved via an auction process, wherein the winning bid is divided amongst the competing bidders.
Minds + Machines said it has cut USD2.24 million of annualised costs since late May, and has identified a further USD700,000 of costs to cut.
The company's second half will be boosted by the launches of new top-level domains .law, .abogado and .miami, and from the renewals of top-level domains it launched in September last year.
"While first half results were impacted by significant operating costs, we have reduced these costs dramatically in the third quarter of 2015, as will become apparent in future results. The board is firmly committed to achieving cross-over to operating profitability in 2016 and to fully monetising our excellent TLD portfolio," said Chief Executive Officer Antony Van Couvering in a statement.
Shares in Minds + Machines were up 5.9% at 8.60 pence Tuesday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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