LONDON (Alliance News) - Internet domain name business CentralNic Group PLC Tuesday expressed confidence in meeting its expectations for 2015, although it noted it is "mindful of the challenges in sustaining" its growth strategy, as it posted a swing to a pretax profit for its first half.
Additionally, CentralNic said it has appointed Mike Turner as its non-executive chairman with immediate effect, as former chairman, John Swingewood, has resigned to pursue other business interests. Turner is a partner and international head of technology media and communications at law firm Taylor Wessing LLP.
For the half year to end-June, CentralNic reported a pretax profit of GBP393,000, swung from a pretax loss of GBP599,000, as revenue rose to GBP4.4 million from GBP1.6 million.
CentralNic launched two new top level domains during the half year, .space, and .design. Following the period end it also launched .online, which it said generated 50,000 registrations after one week of being generally available.
A top level domain name is the suffix of an internet address such as .com or .net which are designated to approved organisations by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN has only allowed a relatively small number of domains until now, such as .com, .org and .gov, but following a change of rules governing domain names it is now allowing a plethora of new domains.
Although public awareness for the new domains is still relatively low, they were boosted in August after Google selected the domain abc.xyz for its new holding company, Alphabet. CentralNic, which is the exclusive wholesalver of .xyz, said it expects awareness to continue to increase.
"Trading since the half year has remained in line with our expectations and, whilst mindful of the challenges in sustaining our growth strategy, the board remains confident that the group is well positioned to deliver its expectations for 2015 while continuing to create substantial shareholder value over the medium term," said Chief Executive Officer Ben Crawford in a statement.
Shares in CentralNic were down 12% at 65.00 pence Tuesday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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