Technology provider uses GDDY.com to redirect to IR website
Looking for an easy way to improve access to your IR website? GoDaddy, the US technology provider and web-hosting company, has taken a step overlooked by most traded companies so far: using your stock ticker as an extra URL to point to your IR site.
The company announced this week that it had bought the domain name that matches the GoDaddy stock ticker – GDDY.com – and would use the new portal as an additional way into the firm’s investor relations page. The primary aim, according to a press release published by GoDaddy and Right of the Dot, a domain name consulting service, is to enable ‘anyone to quickly find out more about the company.’
According to Right of the Dot, even though 20 percent of the Fortune 500 currently use their stock ticker as a domain name, only two use it as a direct path into their IR websites. Most, it appears, just use it as a stand-in for their home page.
‘We knew the majority of people typing in GDDY.com would want to know more about the company, so it made sense to get the name and point it to our IR page,’ says Mike McLaughlin, senior vice president and general manager at GoDaddy. ‘There are a lot of companies, large and small, that miss the opportunity to use domain names to make it easy for visitors. The right domain name gets visitors exactly where they want to go, eliminating extra steps and time.’
The process of acquiring the URL began when GoDaddy first went public in April 2015, with an IPO that initially raised $460 mn, says Monte Cahn, Right of the Dot’s president and co-founder. ‘GoDaddy gets it as an online industry leader so having the right domain name for its investors was a smart acquisition on all sides,’ he adds.
In its first quarterly earnings since the IPO, published earlier this month, GoDaddy posted revenues of $376 m and a loss of $43.4 mn in the past quarter. CEO Blake Irving admitted that the posted losses might be of concern to some onlookers, but told listeners to the earnings call he was not too worried.
‘Eventually that [loss] will disappear,’ he said. ‘Our investments in products, technology platform and customer care are making a real difference for our customers around the world, and our first quarter results demonstrate the benefits of focusing on their needs.’
Laurie Havelock
Laurie has been part of the IR Magazine team for more than a decade, starting out as a reporter and research editor before becoming editor in 2023. He was previously acting business editor at the i newspaper and deputy business editor at The Daily...
