Transcripts
GoDaddy Inc.'s management answers for the business every quarter. These are the exchanges that explain it best — verbatim, from the call transcripts preserved in Sources. Each link opens the full transcript at that page in a new tab.
Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2026
The current state: AI products beginning to monetize, ANS as a new identity layer, and the thesis tested on Airo economics and buyback pace. · Open the full transcript →
How the two segments make money: high-margin A&C now ~40% of the business, Core Platform driven by primary domains.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO): For our high-margin A&C segment, we drove 12% growth in revenue to $0.5 billion on continued solid attach of our subscription-based solutions. A&C ARR grew 10%, and this segment now represents approximately 40% of our total business. Segment EBITDA margin improved 110 basis points to 45% on product mix. Our Core Platform segment delivered revenue growth of 3% to $769 million, on 5% growth in primary domains with a stronger mix towards higher-priced non-.com TLDs. This was partially offset by softness in non-core GoDaddy hosting, the .CO registry contract expiration and tougher compares in aftermarket. Segment EBITDA margin expanded 150 basis points to 33% on product mix.
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How GoDaddy defines and measures a 'high-intent' customer — the core of the model.
Amanpal Bhutani (CEO); Vikram Kesavabhotla (Baird): On the cohorts that we're attracting, our strategy is to attract high-intent customers. The way we define high intent is by looking at the traffic coming in by channel and then looking at the activation and attach of other products. And what we know from years and years of data across our 20 million customers is that if we see that activation and attach of other products, we are going to see good renewal at the end of the one-year term.
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Sizing the new AI product: the $10M Airo AI Builder run rate is early bookings from subscriptions and credits.
Amanpal Bhutani (CEO); Hoi-Fung Wong (Oppenheimer): When we talk about the $10 million run rate, we're really talking about annualized bookings. This is very early data. This includes both subscriptions and credits or tokens. […] In terms of what it could be, it's super early and we're excited about the early adoption. We just started selling it in Care. We're going to add paid marketing starting this month. We also have the large funnels with domains and website paths which we haven't fully leveraged yet.
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The hardest exchange: with buybacks below free cash flow and cash building, management deflects to its track record.
Trevor Young (Barclays); Mark McCaffrey (CFO): And then second one on capital allocation: buybacks here in Q1 were well below free cash flow generation and the 95% payout stat that you've given. Meanwhile, cash at kind of the highest level since mid‑2021, if I'm not mistaken. Just any updated thoughts on capital allocation and buyback appetite with the stock at current levels? And in lieu of buybacks, any updated thoughts on M&A? […] On capital allocation, don't look at any particular quarter; look at our history — it's a good indicator of how we approach this. We look quarter by quarter, make determinations, and buybacks remain a strong lever to return value to shareholders. Our track record of returning capital shows how we approach this, and our philosophy hasn't changed.
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Stated plainly: GoDaddy will let lower-LTV domain customers go rather than chase share.
Amanpal Bhutani (CEO); Eleanor Smith (JPMorgan): Is your intention to maintain or gain share? Or would you be willing to let some lower-LTV domain customers go at the expense of market share? […] We have said we will let lower-LTV customers go because our focus is on high-intent customers. Looking at the Domains business, we remain the world's largest domain registrar by far. Over the last 30 years we've faced many competitive pressures — low-priced registrars, loss-leader strategies, free domains and disruptive technologies — and we continue to compete. Our experience shows that value is in the high-intent customer: someone who buys a domain and then uses other products. That behavior drives LTV for GoDaddy and drives our business.
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Q4 & Full Year 2025 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2025
The pivot call: full-year 2025 wrapped, the deliberate go-to-market change that dented bookings explained, and the moat vs AI entrants argued. · Open the full transcript →
The self-inflicted headwind, first admitted: a .com promo drew more demand than expected, cutting near-term bookings and revenue.
Amanpal Bhutani (CEO): Domains have been and will continue to be GoDaddy's strong, durable cash-generative engine serving as a long-term funnel to drive GoDaddy's growth. To further build on this resilient foundation and bring more quality customers onto the platform, this quarter, we expanded our go-to-market approach with a streamlined purchase experience for new domain customers. […] We activated our marketing channels on the streamlined experience and introduced a promotional price for .com domains with a one-year term. The approach successfully increased new customer volume that purchased domain units with one-year terms. But the demand for this offer was greater than we expected. And the shift in term mix, combined with the promotional price, reduced upfront bookings and nearterm revenue.
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The compounding engine, quantified: the $500-plus cohort, rising ARPU and retention, five years of margin gains converting 1:1 to cash.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO): We see this most clearly in our highest value cohorts who spend more than $500 annually, which grew 11% and that represent approximately 10% of our total base. These customers have meaningfully higher second and third product attach rates and near-perfect retention. The result is compounding value creation with ARPU increasing 10% to $242 and overall retention rates rising above 85%. […] Full year normalized EBITDA grew 14% to $1.6 billion and a margin of 32%, representing 150 basis points of expansion over the prior year. Over the past five years, cumulative margin expansion of 1,000 basis points reflects our ability to scale efficiently while continuing to invest in the business. This margin expansion flows through directly to cash generation. Free cash flow grew a robust 19% to $1.6 billion with a normalized EBITDA to free cash flow conversion of greater than 1:1.
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How much of the 2026 slowdown is self-inflicted: two-thirds is the .CO loss and aftermarket, one-third the go-to-market change.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO): With this, our full year revenue outlook incorporates just over 200 basis points of cumulative impact from the expiration of the .CO registry contract, the continued exclusion of high-value aftermarket transactions, and the go-to-market and product evolution we spoke about. The .CO and aftermarket impacts represent approximately two-thirds of this amount, while one-third is from the go-to-market and product evolution. For the full year, we expect total revenue to be within a range of $5.195 billion to $5.275 billion, representing growth of approximately 6% at the midpoint
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Management's own framing of the go-to-market change — and its admission it worked better than planned.
Vikram Kesavabhotla (Baird); Amanpal Bhutani (CEO): My first one is on this promotional offer with .com. Can you talk more about why you decided to make that change in your go-to-market strategy? And you referenced seeing some improvements in February. Could you talk more about what you're observing there? And I guess from a higher level, do you think this was a one-time headwind to bookings in 2026? Or is there a potential for this change in the strategy to weigh on bookings as we move beyond this year? […] So the go-to-market evolution is really about opening up the top of the funnel and is attracting a lot more high-intent customers. And it's more than just an offer. It's a path, an optimized path that allows customers to come in and convert at a much, much higher rate. So there are three core components to it. There's the new path, the optimized path, the offer, and the marketing channels that we enabled to sort of drive traffic into it. Overall, we're very happy with the results. It attracted a lot of new customers. It was a bit more successful than we thought.
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The competitive hedge: AI entrants aim at enterprise; GoDaddy serves the roofer and cleaner — but is 'not immune.'
Arjun Bhatia (William Blair); Amanpal Bhutani (CEO): So I'm curious, just as you looked at your old funnel, was there anything that sort of was indicating that the competitive intensity was increasing, especially from some of the Vibe coding players out there. And Aman, I think you touched on the moat there a little bit, but I'm curious how the new motion will maybe help you sort of defend against some of the competitors that are coming into the space? […] When I look at the competitors in the AI space, we still continue to see a lot of that focus being on enterprise employees, like product managers, people that work within enterprises or people that are a little bit sort of working for agencies or companies like that. We see less of that behavior with our direct customer, the person who is the roofer, the cleaner, some micro business owner. So we see less of that. Our expansion of go-to-market is really about being able to bring more high-intent customers into the domains funnel, which is our largest funnel and then attach to it very well. Like that is the primary motion at our company, and we want to continue to reinforce that more and more. I'm not suggesting that we are immune to what's happening in the world, we just have not seen a very large impact of that in our funnel yet or at this time.
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Q3 FY2024 Earnings Call — Q3 FY2024
The clearest walk-through of the operating model — segment economics, the pricing method, capital allocation, and how Airo turns discovery into revenue. · Open the full transcript →
The strategy in two sentences: conversion, attach and retention feed a profitable-growth model aimed at free cash flow.
Aman Bhutani (CEO): Our strategy is relentlessly focused on creating customer value and transforming it to shareholder value through better conversion, attachment, and retention. This is the driving force behind our profitable growth model, propelling us towards our north star of maximizing free cash flow over the long-term.
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The two-segment economics: high-margin A&C at a 46% segment margin, ~85% retention, over half of customers on two-plus products.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO): For our high-margin A&C segment, we drove 20% growth in bookings and 16% growth in revenue to $423 million, in line with our guided range on the strong performance of the growth initiatives Aman spoke about earlier. The segment EBITDA margin for A&C improved to 46% on the strength of our high gross margin proprietary solutions partially offset by the strong performance and lower gross margin profiles of our commerce offerings and third-party solutions. […] ARPU grew 8% to $215 on a trailing 12-month basis, while our customer count declined slightly to $20.7 million. With the previously mentioned divestiture and migration efforts behind us, we expect to return to customer growth in 2025. Currently, our consolidated customer retention rate remains at 85%, and over 50% of our customers have two or more paid products with us.
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Capital allocation, quantified: buybacks running ahead of the 20% share-reduction target, toward $4.5B+ cumulative free cash flow.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO): We drove a 23% reduction in gross shares outstanding since January 2022, 3 points ahead of our three-year targeted reduction of 20%. […] We are pleased with our progress towards our Investor Day target of $4.5 billion plus in cumulative free cash flow generation supported by 6% to 8% annual revenue growth and expansion of our normalized EBITDA margin to 33% by 2026.
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How GoDaddy actually prices: experiment along a price-elasticity curve to balance retention against the pricing opportunity.
Aman Bhutani (CEO); Trevor Young (Barclays): pricing and bundling is about finding the right cohorts of customers, where we can provide the right value to customers and then price along with that value. The way we do this is by experimenting at different price points to find the price elasticity curve. What that curve helps us do is find the right cohorts where we can balance attrition for customers, right, or let's say, retention of customers with the pricing opportunity in front of us.
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How Airo monetizes: discovery, then engagement, then paywalls that convert engaged users into paid subscriptions.
Aman Bhutani (CEO); Ygal Arounian (Citi): The progress with Airo goes on a timeline of discovery, engagement, and monetization. Discovery is about getting Airo in front of as many customers as possible and getting them to discover that GoDaddy has a breadth of products available to them. The engagement piece is about getting them to engage in some of those products, and you’ll remember that we call those Airo cards, getting customers to click on them, engage with them, and set something up. We're seeing really good traction on discovery and engagement. Over the last quarter or two, we started to put up paywalls where, along with that engagement, if, for example, a customer got a coming soon page and wanted to customize it a little bit, if they wanted to do more, a paywall would appear and say you need to buy a subscription or websites plus marketing. It's possible that a customer would have bought it anyway, two months or three months down the line, and we would have gotten that attachment. But what Airo offers is the ability for us to paywall right there, getting the customer to make that decision. That paywall is connected to the 40% that I talked about today.
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Q1 FY2024 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2024
The cleanest primer on how GoDaddy is built: the North Star, the two segments and their margins, and the bookings-versus-revenue mechanic. · Open the full transcript →
The North Star and its two pillars, set against the Investor Day framework — the base a reader needs.
Amanpal Bhutani (CEO): At our Investor Day, we shared our updated 3-year strategic framework and financial targets. As our Q1 results showcase, we are off to a strong start in 2024. In service of ou North Star, we continue to expand our free cash flow meaningfully, delivering 26% free cash flow growth year-over-year. The pillars behind our North Star are accelerating growth in our applications and commerce segment and disciplined margin expansion.
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The two segments defined, with GoDaddy Payments passing $2B in annualized volume for the first time.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO): The key pillars underlying our North Star are the double-digit growth in our application and commerce segment revenue of 13%, coupled with disciplined normalized EBITDA margin expansion to 28%, which converts to free cash flow at an impressive 1:1 ratio. […] our higher-margin Applications & Commerce segment delivered $383 million in revenue, growing 13%, in line with our guided range. The drivers of this performance included strength in our bundling and pricing initiatives across all major product offerings, including productivity solutions, website building products, and commerce. Additionally, annualized GPV for GoDaddy payments grew to $2 billion for the first time. Segment EBITDA margin was 42%, up over 300 basis points. Lastly, ARR for Applications & Commerce grew 13% to $1.5 billion. Core platform revenue totaled $725 million, growing 4% which exceeded our guidance on strength in domains, up 7% and aftermarket, up 12%. Our growth was driven by strong demand for domains in the primary and secondary market, increased pricing in the primary market, and a higher average transaction value in the secondary market. This was partially offset by a decrease in hosting due to our divestitures. Segment EBITDA margin for the core platform grew to 30%, up nearly 300 basis points.
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How to read bookings versus revenue — the cash-collected leading indicator that drives the whole 2026 debate.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO): Moving on to bookings, in Q1, we achieved 9% growth on our reported and constant currency basis, reaching $1.3 billion. As a reminder, bookings primarily represent the cash collected during the period. Applications in commerce bookings grew 22% from improvements in pricing and bundling for productivity solutions, website building products, and commerce. Core platform bookings increased 3% on the performance of domains in the aftermarket due to strong demand for domains in the primary and secondary market, offset by headwinds in hosting. Subscription bookings grew 2 points ahead of subscription revenue.
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More calls
Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q3 FY2025 · 13 pages · Where Agent Name Service was first introduced and the 2025 revenue guide was raised toward ~$4.94 billion. · Open →
Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q2 FY2025 · 11 pages · The mid-2025 raise of the full-year free-cash-flow target to ~$1.6 billion, with the agentic-Airo narrative building. · Open →
Q1 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2025 · 10 pages · The AI narrative's early-2025 shift toward an agentic Airo, before the go-to-market change reshaped the story. · Open →
Q4 & Full Year 2024 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2024 · 16 pages · The FY2024 results and the original 2025 guidance framework — free cash flow of at least $1.5 billion and ~100 bps of margin expansion toward the 33% target. · Open →
Q2 FY2024 Earnings Call — Q2 FY2024 · 13 pages · Mid-2024 pricing-and-bundling momentum and Airo scaling, the quarter before the featured Q3 operating-model call. · Open →
Q4 & Full Year 2023 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2023 · 31 pages · Full-year 2023 results and the three-year Investor Day framework as first laid out (note: transcript is a third-party web capture with formatting noise). · Open →
Q4 & Full Year 2021 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2021 · 36 pages · Bhutani's early full-year strategy and the pre-Airo domains-plus-presence-plus-commerce model (note: third-party web capture with formatting noise). · Open →