The following question, not exactly pins and needles, but I assume not many people have ever consider it...
Q: How should a TLD (Top-Level Domain) operator appraise its WHOIS DB?
Problem statement: For specific reason, the management of one TLD registry operator decides to sell the business and liquidate all its asset, including office space, servers, human capital, etc. The CFO also calculates the intangible assets, including the company's brand name, good will, plus a customer database which contains all its domain name holders info, namely WHOIS.
WHOIS was originally designed in the 80's for network administrator to have better idea of "who is who" and "where is who". It's getting more and more important now for not only network interoperability and stability, but also for cyberspace identity, security, even national sovereignty.
The registry operator serves only less than 5000 customers, with registration about 20,000 names (i.e. 20,000 whois records). Not all names are in real works but most of the well-known famous Fortune Global 500 companies have registered names under this TLD (for protection or future use). Numerous e-commerce sites under this TLD hits big time because of good naming (easy-to-remember) strategy. The registration fee is fairly reasonable but depending on registrars bundle offer, and the renewal rate is high, about 80%.
If I were the CFO, I will make seperate offering in this deal. It's the solid financial lifeline for any successor, and a significate number of websites heavily rely on the service provided by the TLD operator (i.e. DNS services / name resolving service); If I were the buyer, I will pay nothing for the whois record and consider it's a joint value given by the market. Any value of this TLD belongs to the Internet community which the TLD located, not the operator itself.
If you were the CFO, or the buyer, how do you make reasonable offering (what are the benchmarks) or bargain?
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