LONDON (Alliance News) - Minds + Machines Group Ltd on Wednesday reported a swing to a pretax loss for 2015 as it began its transition to being solely a domain registry business, and confirmed the appointment of Toby Hall as its chief executive officer.
The company reported a swing to a pretax loss of USD10.0 million in 2015, from a pretax profit of USD22.1 million the year before, mostly as a result of a much lower profit from its participation in generic top level domain auctions.
Revenue rose to USD6.3 million from USD1.9 million, boosted by renewals for a number of its top-level domains, including .london, and the launches of the .law and .miami domains.
Minds + Machines over the last few years has been participation in auctions for new generic top level domains, meaning the suffix of a web address such as .com or .co.uk, following a change in rules that would allow a slew of new generic top level domains to go live. Through these auctions Minds + Machines won a number of generic top level domains as well as netting a significant profit from participating in the auctions.
It has an interest in a remaining eight contested top level domains, and expects some of these to be resolved via private auctions during the year.
During 2015 the company underwent some rationalisation, cutting headcount and reducing the size of its board.
Following the year end Minds + Machines took steps to shift its focus solely towards registry of domains, as it said it believes that it can return the greatest value to shareholders as an owner of the assets, rather than owning the assets and also operating the technical back-end and retailing names within its domains to the public.
"What we are rapidly executing is a full re-structuring of the business so that it can operate efficiently in the three key time-zones where the board sees near-term market growth for our portfolio: Asia, North America and Europe," said CEO Hall said in a statement.
"Whilst cost savings from the restructuring will largely be realised in the second half of the year, the business is already on a much sounder platform and our absolute focus is the profitable growth of our domains under management. With this in mind, we confidently look forward to the launch of .vip in China in May," Hall added.
Hall was confirmed as chief executive officer following approval at the company's board meeting Tuesday, Minds + Machines said.
Shares in Minds + Machines were down 1.0% at 8.79 pence Wednesday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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