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.
GoDaddy Q1 2026 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2026
Most recent call: how high-intent customers drive attach/ARPU, A&C vs Core economics, buyback-led capital allocation, and early Airo AI Builder traction. · Open the full transcript →
Segment structure and unit economics: A&C vs Core Platform margins, ARR mix, and the Airo-driven lift in $500+ customers.
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. […] And our newer Airo cohorts are demonstrating that higher value with second product attach accelerating 30% faster relative to non-Airo cohorts. These cohorts are contributing to the increase in the number of customers spending more than $500 annually, which represents approximately 10% of our customer base. Higher attach and retention rates above 85% drove ARPU growth of 9% to $246.
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Capital-allocation and cash framework: over 95% of free cash flow to buybacks, above 1:1 EBITDA conversion, and a 20% free-cash-flow North Star.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO: Free cash flow grew 15% to $474 million, with a normalized EBITDA to free cash flow conversion of greater than 1:1. […] Since 2022, our share repurchase programs have resulted in a gross reduction in fully diluted shares outstanding of over 31%. And we ended the quarter with 133 million shares outstanding. […] For the full year, we expect normalized EBITDA to maintain a greater than 1:1 conversion to free cash flow, and we reaffirm our full year free cash flow target of approximately $1.8 billion. We continue to be on track to exceed our free cash flow North Star CAGR of 20%. On capital allocation. We operate within a disciplined, return-based framework and have deployed greater than 95% of our free cash flow over the last four years towards share repurchases.
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How GoDaddy measures customer quality (high intent) and its philosophy for splitting AI efficiency gains between margin and reinvestment.
Vikram Kesavabhotla, Baird; Amanpal Bhutani, CEO; Mark McCaffrey, CFO: 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. […] we have the ability to expand our margins; we have for the past few years. We're continuing to see operational efficiencies by the adoption of AI internally. And then we're paying attention to the disciplined approach we've had in the past around investing in innovation, but using data points that show our path to return before we invest.
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Airo AI Builder monetization mechanics — subscriptions plus credits, still-untapped domain/website funnels, and hosting as a differentiator.
Hoi-Fung (Ken) Wong, Oppenheimer; Amanpal Bhutani, CEO: 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. We see customers come in by a subscription, engage with the product, enjoy the product, and they keep coming back […] 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. […] Airo AI Builder does use GoDaddy hosting. It's one of our competitive differentiators. We can provide hosting at scale that's secure and cost-effective.
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Hardest question: pressed for Airo unit economics — transaction size, credit-vs-subscription split, margin vs Websites + Marketing; management declines specifics.
Mark Zgutowicz, Benchmark; Amanpal Bhutani, CEO: You just closed $10 million in annualized bookings run rate for Airo AI Builder within weeks of beta. Could you break down the unit economics there? What's the average transaction size? How much of that run rate is coming from credit top-ups versus the initial plan purchase? And what's the margin profile relative to legacy Websites + Marketing? […] From day one, we've designed this product to be gross margin positive and to deliver appropriate economics. Regarding subscription versus credits, we're very early; this needs to bake and grow. […] It's too early to provide detailed disclosures on the split between subscription and credits.
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Competitive positioning: a domain/DNS-based right to win in Agent Name Service, and willingness to let low-LTV domain customers go.
Eleanor Smith, JPMorgan; Amanpal Bhutani, CEO: GoDaddy has a strong right to win because within the ANS open standard we use the Domain Name System for discovery. DNS is a universal directory that replicates everywhere; agent registries are appearing across companies, and connecting those registries to the single DNS directory enables broad discovery. […] We have said we will let lower-LTV customers go because our focus is on high-intent customers. […] 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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GoDaddy Q4 and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call — Q4 & FY2025
Annual call: the domains-to-attach LTV flywheel, the $500 cohort, AI cost discipline, and the 2026 .com go-to-market's bookings-vs-revenue trade-off. · Open the full transcript →
Segment economics and the funnel: A&C (47% margin) vs Core Platform, with domains as the front door and Airo driving attach.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO: For the Applications & Commerce segment, we drove 13% growth in revenue to $498 million on continued solid adoption and attach of our subscription-based solutions. Segment EBITDA margin improved 40 basis points to 47%. A&C ARR grew 12%. Our Core Platform segment delivered revenue growth of 3% to $776 million, driven by the continued strength in aftermarket, up 8% as well as 5% growth in primary domains, partially offset by the softness in non-core GoDaddy hosting. Segment EBITDA margin expanded 70 basis points to 35%. […] Domains remain the front door to our platform, attracting high-intent customers at a pivotal moment in their journey. Airo personalizes the experience that follows, accelerating discovery and increasing attach across identity, presence, and commerce.
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The durable-growth engine: Airo LTV lift, the $500 cohort with near-perfect retention, ARPU flywheel, and 1,000 bps of five-year margin expansion.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO: the velocity of a second product attach accelerated by nearly 30% relative to non-Airo cohorts. This dynamic is expanding lifetime value across our customer base. 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%. […] 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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Capital allocation and 2026 guidance: 100% of FCF to buybacks, ~33% cumulative share reduction, and the sizing of the 2026 revenue headwinds.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO: In 2025, we deployed 100% of our free cash flow, repurchasing 10.2 million shares totaling $1.6 billion while maintaining our balance sheet strength. Since 2021, our share repurchase programs have resulted in a gross reduction in fully diluted shares outstanding of approximately 33% and we ended the year with 136 million shares outstanding. […] 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. […] We expect to drive free cash flow of approximately $1.8 billion, maintaining greater than a 1:1 conversion for the full year.
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Hardest question, answered: whether the 2026 .com promo is a one-time or structural bookings drag, and why it barely touches revenue.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO (to Vikram Kesavabhotla, Baird): […] look at it from the multiyear terms to the annual terms. This is impacting our bookings, but has relatively little impact on revenue itself because the timing of the revenue recognition stays consistent. So that's one aspect of it. The other is there is a reduction in our average order size at initiation related to the discount that gets allocated amongst all the products, that does have a little bit of impact on revenue in and of itself. As time goes on, volume picks up, we get better at this offer. We think the major impact is going to be at the end of this year and going into Q1, but we expect that bookings to be in parity for the most part with revenue by the time we get to the end of the year.
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AI cost economics: a single cost interface plus in-product cost optimization let GoDaddy fund more AI while holding its margin guidance.
Amanpal Bhutani, CEO: even as we look to invest in AI or the AI products, as we talked today, we have a couple of exciting product launches powered by AI, all of those sort of followed two core things. One, all the AI costs go through one interface so that we are able to stay on top of it very, very closely. It doesn't matter if that's a developer. It doesn't matter if it's one of the products that our customers are using. And two, we are very focused on solving for the objective function where we create products that are at a cost that works for our customers. So what you'll continually see in our products is an already optimized AI solution that then leads to lower costs than what you might see at some other companies. So those two things together, the visibility and the operational focus on it and the technological difference of just optimizing for that right within the product is what gives us confidence that we can continue to maintain the margin guidance that Mark has talked about while continuing to fund more and more use of AI, both within the company and with our products.
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Competitive read on AI entrants: vibe-coding tools target enterprise/agency users, not GoDaddy's micro-business funnel — domains-plus-attach stays the moat.
Arjun Bhatia, William Blair; Amanpal Bhutani, CEO: 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. […] 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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GoDaddy Q4 and Full Year 2023 Earnings Call — Q4 & FY2023
The Airo launch call: first controlled-experiment monetization results, the A&C attach flywheel, and the FCF-per-share capital-return engine. · Open the full transcript →
Airo's first controlled experiment: the test cohort monetized above control via attach and mix shift to higher-price/margin products.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: On GoDaddy Airo, I have an update on its performance since launch. I am happy to share that in a controlled experiment, customers that were part of the first test cohort for the Airo experience monetized at rates higher than those customers in the control group that were not exposed to the Airo experience. The increased monetization was due to attach and shifting the mix towards higher price and higher margin products. This is particularly encouraging because significant customer experience changes like Airo typically take many months of iterative improvement to outperform the control group. With this initial promising result, we have rolled out GoDaddy Airo to more customers in the U.S. We have also launched tests in international markets a few days ago.
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Segment unit economics: A&C is the high-margin engine — 13% revenue growth, 44% segment EBITDA margin, and GPV more than doubling to $1.7B.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO: Beginning with Q4 results, our high margin Applications and Commerce revenue grew 13% to $377 million and we delivered an expanded segment EBITDA margin of 44%, increasing 100 basis points since last quarter and 300 basis points since last year. ARR for Applications and Commerce grew 10% to $1.4 billion and our Create + Grow ARR was up 8% to $481 million. In Commerce, we drove significant growth in annualized GPV to $1.7 billion, more than doubling last year's performance as conversion of our existing customers to the GoDaddy software platform remains strong.
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Capital-return engine plus the retention thesis: FCF/share +21%, over 20% share reduction ahead of schedule, and two-product customers giving pricing power.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO: Additionally, the cumulative shares repurchased under our current authorizations totaled $2.6 billion, representing 34.2 million shares retired. This reduced our fully diluted shares outstanding since the inception of these authorizations by over 20%, achieving our three-year targeted reduction ahead of schedule. […] Customer retention remains 85% as we drove improvements in 2+ product attach, with greater than 50% of our customers paying for at least two products. These high-quality customers are stickier and give us greater pricing flexibility.
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The attach flywheel quantified: second product → 85% retention, third product → 'almost a customer for life'; A&C bookings growing double digits across the board.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO; Aman Bhutani, CEO; Vikram Kesavabhotla, Baird: On A&C, the growth drivers, and we talk about this a lot, is we're seeing the demand move to that second product much faster than we had ever seen. And then now we're seeing it to the third product much faster than we've ever seen. So that shows up in our A&C growth. That's our higher profitability segment as well. […] We've talked about once we get to the second product, our average retention is 85%, but it goes up from there. If we get customers to a third product, it goes up significantly. It's almost a customer for life. So, those are the things that are driving the momentum in A&C right now
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Airo monetization beyond attach: new paywalls GoDaddy has never run (e.g. premium logos), with 21M customers and 14M interactions feeding pricing.
Aman Bhutani, CEO; Evercore ISI: In terms of product attach and other monetization means, of course, product attach is the first level we're looking for. But as we'll share a little bit at our Investor Day, we're also looking for new monetization methods. And I'll just give you an example. One of the things that we want to test is a premium offering for logo building. […] And we're going to test a new paywall for it and a new monetization method that GoDaddy has never done before. […] And with 21 million customers, 14 million interactions with them, we get a lot of data about how they're getting value out of our products, which creates a lot of opportunity going forward around pricing bundles, elasticity around that, seeing the value they're driving.
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Hardest question: why is net customer growth only ~1% vs 2-4% historically? A deliberate intent-based trade-off, shedding low-intent single-product customers.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO (to Ygal Arounian, Citigroup): When we look at our customers, we've always said we are targeting customers with a higher intent to do something when they come into the funnel, add that second product, start that business, generate value for themselves, and therefore generate value for us. What we've seen coming out of '23 and continuing into 2024 at the gross ads level is that consistent, strong demand that we've talked about all year and that continuing. And to put it in perspective, '23 gross customer ads was higher than 2022, right? And so not only are we seeing an increase there, we're seeing it more consistent from quarter to quarter and more stable. […] And we're seeing through the divestitures, we are losing customers, but they are generally customers that were low intent customers. So they were on a single product, maybe weren't doing things, hadn't done things for years. So that trade off is in there and continues to be something that we are working through on a net customer ad basis.
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GoDaddy Q2 2022 Earnings Call — Q2 FY2022
Where the two-segment model (Applications & Commerce vs Core Platform) and the FCF-per-share buyback framework are laid out, plus the high-LTV pricing discipline. · Open the full transcript →
The Applications & Commerce segment defined: growth range, drivers, and ARR — the high-margin half of the two-segment model.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO: Applications and Commerce revenue grew 15% within the target range of 14% to 16%, driven by continued strength in our Create and Grow products and Email attach. The ARR for Applications and Commerce grew 12% to more than $1.2 billion. And within that, the ARR from our Create and Grow products grew 10% to $420 million.
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Core Platform plus the capital-return math: unlevered FCF +16%, $1B of buybacks retiring ~8% of shares, FCF/share +19%, net leverage in range.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO: Unlevered free cash flow for the quarter totaled $274 million growing 16%, driven by strong profitability. Additionally, year to date, we completed $1 billion of share buybacks, repurchasing 12.8 million shares and reducing our fully diluted share count by approximately 8% since year-end. Free cash flow per share rose to $5.67 on a trailing 12-month basis versus the prioryear cash flow per share of $4.78, a 19% increase on strong cash flow and share repurchases. […] Net debt stands at $3.1 billion at the midpoint of our targeted range of two to four times.
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How to read FX and pricing: currency hits bookings not costs, and price changes are tested nuanced by geography rather than rolled out globally.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO; Aman Bhutani, CEO; Trevor Young, Barclays: And then on pricing, yes, what you saw, Trevor, was us testing some changes, and those were the price test for Websites + Marketing. In terms of taking that international, as I've shared before, the price testing for us is quite nuanced. We base it on geography, on sort of customer expectations changing on market share. So you'll see it appear in certain geographies, but not in others. […] So most of the impact on the FX affects our bookings, our costs are pretty much fixed and in line with the U.S. dollar. So I would say, look for most of the FX impact to flow through to bookings and then ultimately lead to revenue with minimal impact on the cost in our structure today.
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The retention thesis: products carrying large consumer surplus for high-LTV customers are the last spend they walk away from in a downturn.
Aman Bhutani, CEO (to Brent Thill, Jefferies): We add to that the fact that the products we sell create tremendous value for our customers and the price we charge, leaves plenty of consumer surplus for our customers, right? So even if they have to adapt to changing economic environment, the products we typically sell to them tend to be the last products they walk away from. So that's why we see sort of the continued high retention rates for customers.
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How it makes money: bundling a payments-enabled checkout into the domain purchase itself - Commerce on every surface (the Omnicommerce ethos).
Aman Bhutani, CEO (to Mark Zgutowicz, Rosenblatt Securities): […] buy a domain, you get checkout page that you can customize that's enabled for your domain automatically. So you literally buy the domain and you can start taking payments, right? And that's a bit of a different movement in that we're not selling the product and then attaching more, we're bundling it in right with the first purchase and literally putting – and the idea there is put Commerce on every surface we have because that is, in a sense, the Omnicommerce ethos, right, like wherever you're transacting, whatever surface you're creating your commerce or your micro business is enabled in there.
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Hardest question — is GoDaddy raising price on existing subs? Answer lays out the value-first pricing discipline that preserves consumer surplus.
Aman Bhutani, CEO; Naved Khan, Truist Securities: We have a large sort of broad portfolio of products. So we're constantly evaluating and doing tests and seeing where we should take price. And typically, we're taking price after we have added more value for the customer, right? We want to continue to push the willingness to pay up and then take price so that the surplus for the consumer continues to be maintained and the customer stay super happy with us.
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More calls
GoDaddy Q4 and Full Year 2024 Earnings Call — Q4 & FY2024 · 16 pages · Airo's entry into the paid monetization phase (Airo and Airo Plus), the quality-over-quantity customer-base reset to 20.5M, and the 33%-margin-by-2026 path. · Open →
GoDaddy Q4 and Full Year 2021 Earnings Call — Q4 & FY2021 · 35 pages · The $3B (2022–2024) buyback authorization framed as ~80% of projected FCF, plus the ARPU/customer and transactional-aftermarket mechanics of the model. · Open →
GoDaddy Q3 2025 Earnings Call — Q3 FY2025 · 13 pages · For the most recent read before the 2026 go-to-market shift — Airo Builder ramp and momentum in the $500+ high-value cohort. · Open →
GoDaddy Q1 2024 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2024 · 13 pages · For the first full quarter after the Airo rollout and Investor Day, with early pricing-and-bundling execution against the durable-growth framework. · Open →