Ygal Arounian: I want to dig into the pace of domain growth a little bit, and understood the pressures in China. So maybe just a few things around outside of China. You disclosed the revenue growth by geography. And maybe you could just speak a little bit to the domain growth by geography to and if you’re seeing different brands. There’s some pricing within the geography revenue growth as well. So — what are you seeing overall by geography and domains? And even though it’s better than what we’re seeing in China, we’re still kind of below historical norms, and what you think the contributing factors are there around that?
George Kilguss: Just a couple of points. I mean there’s obviously a lot going on in the world today. Obviously, we have some macroeconomic factors, still high interest rates, so there’s still high inflation. Obviously, there’s some geopolitical factors going on there. So I think those are — like other companies, those things are impacting our business. But as Jim mentioned, we are seeing ex-China’s registrars growth from those groups, both in new registrations as well as the domain name base there. Again, I would point to, we really don’t break out the domain name base for competitive purposes. But I would point you to our geographic revenue disclosure, which really gives you a sense of some of the growth. We don’t — we charge the same price.
We do charge the same price across all markets. So we offer that to everybody. So I think it’s a fair comparison for you to take a look at that. But the domain name base continues to be resilient. I think the value proposition of the domain name remains strong. But the declines we’re seeing in China, which is a smaller geographical segment, of ours is impacting the total domain name base growth, but we’re able to offset that as the other geographies have performed better.
Ygal Arounian: Got it. Okay. That’s helpful there. And maybe on the cost side. Also, you guys continue to come in ahead of expectations despite the relative softness on the revenue side. So as we kind of get to the end of this year and start looking into 2024, just maybe walk us through how you’re thinking about cost and investments and what’s needed, what’s not and how you’re approaching that?
George Kilguss: Yes. We’ll provide full year guidance on our next earnings call for 2024. Our expenses or the midpoint of our guidance suggests that our expenses will be lower this year, around 3%, and that’s down from prior years. Keep in mind, we did have some costs come out of the business with regard to .tv migrated away from us. That was about $5 million of fees that we paid to .tv that is not picked up this year. But if you were to normalize that out, we’re probably at a similar expense growth rate this year than last year. And as you recall, last year, expenses grew about 4% or so. So we’ll continue to manage expenses and be responsible. As Jim said, several quarters in a row. During this time of uncertainty, we’re trying to control what we can control and that means being responsible, making sure we’re making the right investments and areas where we can make some efficiencies, we’ll do so.
But I can assure you, we’re making all the necessary investments we need to execute our mission and our strategic framework to protect the Company and meet our SLAs.
Jim Bidzos: Yes. Ygal, this is Jim. George is exactly right. The term responsible expense control for us means that, first and foremost, investment in our infrastructure to provide the critical infrastructure services that we do provide is simply mandatory. We make all of those, but we manage responsibly where we can. And as George said, next round of earnings will give you full 2024 guidance.
Operator: And we will go back to Rob Oliver with Robert W. Baird.
