Tucows Inc (TCX) 2009 Q3 法說會逐字稿

完整原文

使用警語:中文譯文來源為 Google 翻譯,僅供參考,實際內容請以英文原文為主

  • Operator

  • Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Tucows Inc. third quarter fiscal 2009 conference call. Earlier this afternoon, Tucows issued a news release reporting its financial result for the third quarter of fiscal 2009. The news release and financial statements are available on the company's website at tucowsinc.com under the Investor's heading. Please note that today's call is being broadcast live over the internet and will be archived for replay both by telephone and via the internet beginning approximately one hour following the completion of this call. Details or how to access the replays are available in today's news release report to the third quarter financial results as well as at Tucows' website.

  • Before we begin today, let me remind you that the matters the company will be discussing include forward-looking statements and as such, are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risk factors are described in detail in the company's documents filed with the SEC, specifically the most recent reports on Form 10K and 10Q. The company urges you to read its securities filings for a full description of the risk factors applicable for its business. I would like to turn the call over to Tucows' President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Elliot Noss. Please go ahead, sir.

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us today. With me is Michael Cooperman, Tucows' Chief Financial Officer. As per our usual format for the calls, I will begin with a brief overview of our financial performance and some of the operational highlights for the third quarter of 2009. I will then turn things over to Mike for a detailed review of our financial results. Then I will return for some concluding comments before opening the call up to questions.

  • Third quarter saw the continuation of our solid financial performance in 2009. Revenues totaled $20.5 million, up a couple of percentage points from both the third quarter of last year and the second quarter of this year. We have delivered solid financial results driven by our focus on strengthening the competitive position and improving our overall cost structure.

  • Next, I am pleased to report that in September, we received the third and final payment related to the sale of our stake in Afilias which contributed $2 million in cash during the quarter. That brings the total compensation for our Afilias stake to over $7 million. In addition, cash EBITDA for Q3 was over $1.5 million, bringing cash EBITDA year to date to just over $5 million, and that's before including the benefit of our successful Canadian dollar hedging strategy. It is now clearly the case that as I have noted in the past, 2009 looks a lot more like 2007 than 2008. Cash EBITDA is a non-GAAP measure, but I use it here as net income for the quarter includes a large gain in currency contracts and the one time gain from the Afilias sale. With cash flow from operations, there were balance sheet items which had a negative impact of approximately $1.5 million and provisional payments made for 2009 income taxes in the amount of almost $900,000. Mike will speak to each of these items in more details a little later.

  • Turning to our OpenSRS domain service, our strong focus on wholesale domain registration continues to pay off. We saw continued growth in both new and renewal domain registration transactions. New registrations were up just over 3% on a year-over-year basis and renewals were up 10%. This growth in both new and renewal transactions pushed domains under management up by 6% compared to a year ago to more than $9 million. It also contributed to a year-over-year growth in domain services revenue at 9%.

  • When reporting the strong first quarter, I noted a softening in the overall market in the early part of Q2, a trend we saw continue through the second and third quarters. Now, however, we are seeing strengthening in the market in early Q4 that we find encouraging. We feel the softening we correctly identified then has been replaced by the strengthening we are now starting to see. Again, new registrations are perhaps the best leading indicator of performance and we continue to outperform the market. We are winning new customers and in fact, the pace of these wins is accelerating. We see our customers growing their businesses, and margin is holding steadier than we seen in a long while.

  • The third quarter saw continued reliability in efficiency in our E-mail service. We are seeing more customer wins and are now quite confident that when the last of the three big customers that moved primarily to large portal players are off the platform, we will be well positioned to start growing E-mail again. While we rarely mention the digital certificates business, we are the largest SSL wholesaler in the world which is a great testament to our customer's willingness to buy other services from us. Q3 was record quarter for SSL. Active certificates at the end of quarter were over 38,000, and unit sales were over $8,000 in the quarter, our best quarter ever and a 13% increase over last year.

  • Another real highlight of the quarter was a strong performance from YummyNames, our domain portfolio group. Most importantly, there was nearly $250,000 in brandable domain name sales. The number of brandable domain name transactions has shown great progress through September and continued to accelerate in October. We expect this to be helped further as we finalize the deal to list our domains in the buy domains.com and afternic.com marketplaces and distribution networks, which we view as the best buy now marketplaces in the secondary market. Again, those brandable domain name sales are the segment we view as most strategic. When we add inventory from our expiry stream, this is the type of name we focus on. These brandable domain name sales are up from almost nothing at beginning of last year to where they are today.

  • In summary, a good quarter with nice progress in all our key strategic areas. And I'd now like to turn the call over to Mike to walk through our financial results in detail. Mike?

  • Michael Cooperman - CFO

  • Thanks, Elliot. Net revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2009 was $20.5 million, up slightly from $20.1 million for the third quarter of last year and $20 million for the second quarter of this year. The year-over-year increase was achieved despite the expected declines in E-mail and Hover revenues and were primarily the result of higher domain services and YummyNames revenue.

  • Cost of revenues before network costs for the quarter increased by just over $0.10 or $1.3 million to $13.6 million from $12.3 million for the same quarter of last year. Network cost for the quarter decreased by $781,000 or 32% to $1.7 million from $2.5 million for the third quarter of last year. The decrease is primarily attributable to the lower co-location costs stemming from the closure and relocation of our US based colocation facilities completed in September of last year, as well as the restructuring we implemented in November 2008. It was also attributable to lower network depreciation and amortization costs which decreased by $300,000 compared to the same quarter last year, primarily as result of certain of our older computer hardware being fully depreciated and not requiring replacement.

  • Gross margin for the quarter decreased to 25% from 27% for the third quarter of last year, largely the result of a shifting sales mix to a higher proportion of domain registration services as well as the impact of the 7% registry price increase that was levied by some of the domain registries in October of last year. Even negative impacts on gross margin were partially offset by the lower network costs that I discussed a moment ago. Gross margins from our OpenSRS service, which include domain services, E-mail services and other wholesale services was $4.2 million, or 25% of net sales compared to $4.7 million or 29% of net sales for the third quarter of last year. Gross margin from domain services was $2.8 million, up slightly from the same quarter of last year. As a percentage of domain services revenue, gross margin decreased to 18.4% from 19.5%, reflecting our success and increasing revenues from higher volume, lower price customers as well as the impact of the 7% registry price increase I mentioned earlier.

  • Gross margin from E-mail services decreased to $739,000 from $1.4 million for the third quarter of last year. The decline was primarily the result of the two factors that we have discussed at length in previous calls. Termination of relationships with several nonstrategic enterprise customers acquired from critical (inaudible) that were not a strategic fit for our business, and the loss of the three media portal companies who made the decision to bundle their E-mail requirements into larger supply contracts. The last of these customers is expected to complete their migration during the current quarter. Gross margin percentage for E-mail services was 88%, down marginally from 89% for the third quarter of last year.

  • Gross margin for YummyNames, our domain portfolio services category, increased by $500,000 to $1.6 million compared with $1.1 million for the same quarter of last year. This increase primarily reflects the timing of larger portfolio sales of domain names, while as improved performance we are currently experiencing with our option initiatives. These increases has been partially offset by a decrease in the delivery of third party advertisements of 12 pages of 300,000. Decrease resulted from the impact that our sale of domain names has had on the names we have available for advertising purposes as well as the general economic conditions resulting in the generally slow advertising environment. Gross margin percentage for YummyNames increased to 88% of net sales compared to 86% for the third quarter of last year.

  • Gross margin for Hover, our retail services group, decreased to $711,000 from $1.5 million to the third quarter of 2008. This decrease primarily resulted from the impact on current period revenues of the sale of the remainder of our retail hosting assets part way through the third quarter of last year and our decision to reclassify certain retail customers acquired in the IYD acquisition that did not meet our definition of retail customers to OpenSRS. Revenue was also impacted by our decision to deemphasize new customer acquisition while as -- while we transitioned to our retail customers from our main direct net identity and IYD services to Hover. Gross margin percentage for Hover fell to 59% from 73% for the third quarter of last year. The decrease was largely the result of the impact of the recognition of deferred revenue as a result of the sale of our remaining hosting customers in September of 2008 and on last year's gross margin.

  • Gross margin for Butterscotch, our content services group, decreased slightly to $436,000, $497,000 for the same quarter of last year. This decrease is primarily a result of the contraction from the yields of our syndicated Google feeds and lower revenue from our resource center, which partially offset by an increase in advertising and video revenue. As percentage of net revenue, gross margin decreased from 99% to 95%. Photo operating expenses for the third quarter of fiscal 2009 decreased by $3.9 million or 62%, $2.4 million and 12% of net revenue from $6.4 million or 32% of net revenue for the corresponding quarter of last year. Breaking this down a little further, core operating expenses, which we define as those expenses relating to ongoing sales, marketing, development and administrative costs, decreased by $898,000 or 19%, $3.8 million from $4.9 million for the same quarter last year.

  • As percentage of revenue, core operating expenses decreased to 18.5% from 23.4%. The decreases can be attributed to three main factors. First, a reduction in people related cost of just under 500,000, primarily the result of the restructuring we undertook last November. Second, continued success we are having on our focus on controlling costs, in particular, professional fees which were $200,000 lower and net bank fees which were also $200,000 lower as a result of the initiative we introduced in January of this year to recover some our payment processing fees. And third, the favorable impact of foreign exchange. As we have discussed in the past, a significant portion of our expenses are incurred in Canadian dollars. Thus the weakening of the Canadian dollar relative to the US dollar during the quarter when compared to the same quarter last year has had a positive impact on core operating expenses.

  • Other operating income for the quarter was $1.4 million compared to other operating expenses of $1.7 million in the same quarter last year. The $3.1 million change in other operating expenses can be attributed in main factors. First, we recognized the significant gain on foreign exchange of just over $1.9 million inclusive of a mark-to-market gain of just under $1.9 million. This compares to a loss on foreign exchange in the third quarter of 2008, $683,000, inclusive of a mark-to-market loss of $526,000.

  • I would like to highlight that the mark-to-market accounting process has resulted in the derivative instrument asset related to foreign exchange gains on our balance sheet at the end of September of $1.9 million. This asset will reverse in future accounting periods as we undertake mark-to-market assessments of our outstanding foreign exchange contracts and at that time, will result in a recognition of significant non-cash losses and foreign exchange from those periods in which these forward contracts unwind. I will note that these losses will have a significant non-cash impact on the bottom line next year. Second, we reported a foreign exchange gain of $49,000 during the third quarter as compared to a foreign exchange loss of $200,000 during the third quarter last year. And third, during the third quarter last year, we incurred a loss on disposition of computer equipment of $500,000 that was not incurred this year. Net income for the third quarter of 2009 increased to $5.1 million or $0.07 per share compared with a loss of $71,000 or less than $0.01 per share for the same quarter last year.

  • There were a number of notable items that favorably impacted net income for the third quarter of this year. First, any income include other income of $1.9 million generated by the receipt of the third and final payment from the sale of our equity in Afilias last year. Second, as I noted earlier, we recorded a gain on the value of our foreign exchange contracts, also in the amount of $1.9 million. And third, as we are no longer a subject to state taxes in certain jurisdictions given the change in jurisdictions in which we now operate, we have reassessed the tax rate as which our deferred tax liability should be carried at and have reduced our deferred tax liability by $497,000.

  • Turning to the balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents at end of the third quarter of this year increased to $8.2 million from $2.7 million at the end of the third quarter of last year and $7.4 million at end of the second quarter of this year. The increase of cash of $731,000 from the second quarter of this year is attributable to the receipt of $2 million and the third -- as the third and final payment from the sale of our Afilias investment. This increase was partially offset by our repaying $479,000 on our bank loan, our investing in additional $281,000 in acquiring fixed assets and our using $570,000 to repurchase our shares under the second modified Dutch tender auction offer.

  • Cash flow from operations for the third quarter was $82,000 and as Elliot mentioned, reflects a significant change in non-cash working capital, which was primarily impacted by three factors. First, when payments from customers did not arrive in time for quarter end and resulted our in banking receivable payments amounting to $500,000 shortly after the quarter end. Second, we had made payments of $1 million to certain of our suppliers to comply with new payment terms we had agreed to with them. And third,, as we've explained on prior calls, this is the first year that we recorded a provision for income taxes and during the quarter made provisional payments to the receiver totaling $875,000. Combined, these factor impacted cash flow from operations during the quarter by approximately $2.3 million. Deferred revenue at end of the third quarter was $56.5 million, up $3.9 million from $54.4 million at end of the third quarter of last year, down slightly from $56.9 million at the end of the second quarter of this year.

  • To conclude, our financial results for the third quarter continue to demonstrate the strength of our overall business and continued success in improving our overall cost structure. Against the backdrop of a challenging macro-economic environment and weakness in the internet services market, a strong competitive position has enabled us to grow domain service component of our business in each quarter of this year. At the same time, we are gradually realizing the benefits of the improvements we have made to our other service categories and positioned them for future growth. As a result, to remain confident enough, but need to consistently generate cash flow from operations to realize value for our shareholders. I would like to turn the call back to Elliot.

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • Thanks, Mike. On our year end call in February, I stated that we would be aggressive in returning capital to shareholders. As announced on our last call, we initiated our third modified Dutch auction tender. Under this offer, which commenced on August 20, shareholders have the opportunity to tender their shares at a price ranging from $0.52 to $0.60 per share. Our intention was to repurchase up to 5 million shares. The resulting tenders by shareholders were such that we purchased just under 785,000 shares at $0.60 for a total dollar investment in our part of approximately $470,000.

  • On the positive side, the results are indicative of the loyalty of our share holders and their belief in our business going forward. Before the tender was first announced, our shares were trading in mid $0.40 range. In aggregate, we have now purchased a total of 6.1 million shares through our Dutch tender offers this year, reducing our number of shares outstanding by more than 8%. Total shares outstanding now sit at just over 67 million.

  • While we are not announcing another tender on this call, we were continuing to evaluate next steps here. And most importantly, we remain committed to a strategy that returns capital to shareholders and focused on seeing the value of Tucows best realized. Looking ahead to 2010, we expect to continue to grow our business and generate solid cash flow, but we note that our results will be impacted by a few factors. First, for some time we have been saying that direct navigation names are nonstrategic and it was our objective to bring consistency to bulk sales to this class of name. We have been successful in this regard and now have regular bi-monthly dispositions of these names under a set contract for a consistent amount of money.

  • In addition, in 2009, we were able to sell the bulk of our backlog of these names. This results in nearly $1.5 million of revenue generated that will not be repeatable in 2010. Much, but not all of this will be replaced by increased volume in the sale of brandables and gems. Second, over $1.5 million in revenue from E-mail in 2009 arose from the three large media portal customers who moved as part of broader alliances. We do expect new customers to replace some of that revenue. Third, the change in our tax status. As Mike has discussed on the two previous conference calls this year, in 2010, we will be fully taxable. We did have a low effective tax rate in 2009, however, that rate will increase significantly in 2010.

  • In closing, we feel good about the business. We expect growth to come from a number of different places, and we continue to improve the efficiency in the business. We are looking forward to 2010. And with that, I would like to open the call to questions. Operator?

  • Operator

  • Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Thanos Moschopoulos from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead, sir.

  • Thanos Moschopoulos - Analyst

  • Hi, just starting off with the last point that was made on the tax rate. Can you remind us which tax rate we should be looking for in 2010?

  • Michael Cooperman - CFO

  • Roughly 34.5%.

  • Thanos Moschopoulos - Analyst

  • Okay. You're referring to, that's the reported tax rate on the income statement, right?

  • Michael Cooperman - CFO

  • Sorry, I didn't catch that, Thanos.

  • Thanos Moschopoulos - Analyst

  • You are referring to the reported tax rate on the income statements, correct?

  • Michael Cooperman - CFO

  • That's right.

  • Thanos Moschopoulos - Analyst

  • Yes, okay. Elliot, you made a comment earlier about you are seeing signs of an uptick. In the past few quarters with the downturn in the economy, we haven't seen much of an impact on your business. You have shown remarkable resilience during that time. So how should we think about what impact or effects you will see as the economy starts to recover? Where would that likely show up?

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • We think that the place where we did see a macro impact was in the broader domain name market. If you look at the registry results that get reported, there were some pretty significant breaking of growth or in some cases, even declines in new registrations year-on-year in a couple of those quarters. But we were able to kind of keep growing into that. But it certainly muted our growth. And you'd see it in very simple things. Less -- sometimes if people had a comment on that , they'd let the net go. That kind of activity at the margin. We really saw the start of October distinctly different from September, that starts to pick up. So where that will live for us is in the new registrations and probably the renewal transactions as well. So we think it will help mostly around the domain registration results. It could help a little bit with E-mail as well as our customers start to feel a little bit healthier about things. They could be more open to outsourcing and picking up

  • Thanos Moschopoulos - Analyst

  • Okay. And just talking about the use of cash going forward. You clearly had the Dutch auctions in recent quarters. Any thoughts or what is your current thinking as far as potential for a dividend?

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • Well, I think I will go back to my general statement there, which is I think that's not something that we would in any way consider as long as we felt a stock was undervalued. And I think still, looking at where we are valued relative to -- I never liked, as you know, I never liked to poke too much at valuations, but I'm still pretty comfortable that the stock is quite attractively valued.

  • Thanos Moschopoulos - Analyst

  • Okay, and turning to the domain sales, I just want to be clear on the comments that you made about the non-repeatable business, if you could just elaborate on the comments you made there.

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • Sure. So over the couple, few years that we were sort of taking names in from our expiry stream, we built up a bit of a backlog of those direct a navigation names. And you remember those are the names that are really valued on a multiple of revenue based on their traffic, not for, in any way, their value to a company who might want to name themselves or use it to name a line of business. And we are really focused on those brandable names.

  • Now, through this year, we have been very successful at selling the excess inventory that we'd had around direct navigation names. So now we are getting to the point where -- what we are really doing is we are monetizing that inventory as it comes in. So we kind of burn through some of that backlog, or excess inventory. You would almost think about it if we were a classic business, we had built up excess inventory in a certain line or a certain good that we then chose to run down on because it wasn't one we were emphasizing. And at the same time underneath that, the folks in the YummyNames business unit have really done a strong job building up around those brandable sales. So the direct navigation sale, they'll still go on, but at a slightly reduced rate to last year, around the number that I talked about. And will be filling in with some of those brandables. I think over time, you will continue to see growth around that business unit. But this is really, almost an inventory adjustment.

  • Thanos Moschopoulos - Analyst

  • Okay, got it. That's very clear. In the YummyNames revenue you had this quarter of the $1.8 million, how much would have been in bulk sales?

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • This quarter, I want to say, Mike, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, I'm going to say $350,000 or so, maybe $400,000. Remember, not -- when you are saying bulk, I am thinking now what I will call non-repeatable bulk. So --

  • Thanos Moschopoulos - Analyst

  • Okay, okay.

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • It's about $350,000 to $400,000.

  • Thanos Moschopoulos - Analyst

  • Okay, got you. So they were rather large transactions, but --

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • Well, now really, we have quite regular transaction stream that is in the kind of low six figures every month or really a transaction every 60 days that was a couple of those. That's pretty regular, and we -- it does change a little bit each 60 day period based on the names that flow through. But we have now seen, I want to say three or four of those, and they are pretty consistent transaction to transaction.

  • Thanos Moschopoulos - Analyst

  • Okay. Then on the OpEx side, should we think of any significant changes there? Not especially?

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • No. Certainly as we are looking forward , and something we actually started to do really in the last half of 2009 is to spend a little bit more money on marketing. And when I say that, that's primarily in terms of -- not very many but a couple few. And what you are seeing there, Thanos, is as we have done so much of the plot form work that we did, both in the OpenSRS business, also in the Butterscotch and Hover business, now that that work is behind us and you have done the back end, now we can start to focus a little more on the sales and marketing side, against the things that we've built and put in place. So it's little bit more of a spend, but really, you noticed a long time. When I say that, it's not really in very

  • Thanos Moschopoulos - Analyst

  • Great. Okay. That's it for me, thanks. I'll get off the line. Thanks, Thanos.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions) We have a question from David Shore from Research Capital. Please go ahead, sir.

  • David Shore - Analyst

  • Hi, guys.

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • Hi, David.

  • David Shore - Analyst

  • Elliot, product-wise, maybe you could lay out what the next year or two. Would there be additional things you would be interesting in the portfolio? Give us thoughts on that.

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • I think that as we are looking forward, the things that we are playing with on the road map are things that really extend from domain names and E-mail. So we think that there are some additional, pretty closely related services that we will be able to supplement with. I think that on a -- so in other words, what you would hear there is that there is no kind of whole new category that we see bringing in. But we do see some additional revenue opportunities through 2010 on some very closely related ancillary services. And in addition, we are still big believers that there is some nice upside with the personal name service. That we are really focusing on nailing that on the retail side of the business in Hover and then taking what lessons we learn there and to the extent that we are able to crack the code there, rolling some of that learning back into wholesale. We think we've got an amazing service with that personal name service. That E-mail address, that's first name and last name.com, net or org, we think is still a real opportunity, and it sits right at the intersection of domain names and E-mails. So we think there is a lot of opportunity in what we have in front of us.

  • David Shore - Analyst

  • Okay. And as far as -- those are the things you would be developing in-house, I would assume?

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • Yes, that's right.

  • David Shore - Analyst

  • Okay, and any changes competitively? Many guys being more aggressive pricing or anything like that?

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • No. I think that there's probably two comments I would make there. One, you've heard me talk in the past about the fact that we are more focused on the wholesale segment than really, in our view, any of our competitors at a company level. For Tucows the company, wholesale services to hosting companies and ISPs is what we do at our core, and we think that that focus -- so competitively, as others maybe have other things that are interesting them, that focus pays off, and plays out well competitively. In terms of price, we really set about to try to be the low cost supplier. So when I say low cost, I'm not talking about low price. But to be the most efficient and effective supplier in the industry and the one that could live with the thinnest oxygen, and I think we have done a great job of getting ourselves there. So I hope that our competitors are more worried more about us there than we were worried about them.

  • David Shore - Analyst

  • Okay, that's it for me. Thanks.

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • Thanks, David.

  • Operator

  • Your next question comes from Aaron Fuchs from Fertile Mind Capital. Please go ahead, sir.

  • Aaron Fuchs - Analyst

  • I was wondering if you could be a little more specific on the increase in accounts payables? What was the purpose for it?

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • Are you talking about the payables?

  • Aaron Fuchs - Analyst

  • Yes, yes. What did --

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • You mean the decrease in payables? The use of cash in payables?

  • Aaron Fuchs - Analyst

  • Right, right.

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • So there was a change in the iCan contracts that created an incentive to significantly accelerate the payments. And it was part of a number of changes in the new RAA or the Registrar Accreditation Agreement with iCan. And so it created a little bit of a change in the iCan fee, which is something that we passed along to our customers that we flow through on our pricing. And it required us to pretty significantly accelerate the payments. So that's something where you kind of catch up once and then you are in a pretty new steady stream cycle.

  • Aaron Fuchs - Analyst

  • Right. Okay, and then I was wondering, retail declined a little bit sequentially. And in the context of your statement of trying to crack the code in personal names in Hover, I was wondering, how far along are you at cracking that code, and when do you think retail -- I'm assuming that we would see that -- an increase in sales, and retail first and then you could share what you did with your wholesale customers.

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • That's right. So there's probably two comments I will make there. One, the sequential number is not really a big dollar number, and that's primarily driven by renewal patterns. Still, overwhelmingly the revenue in that business is most retail businesses that have been around a while is renewal. So that's a big driver there. The -- in terms of the stuff that we are doing for personal names, we're -- I'm wondering if you would have seen this as an old domain direct customer.

  • We are doing things like learning how to cross-sell to domain holder the personal names. We are working on a number of places where we are going to enter into new affiliate relationships. That effort really started in ernest around July/August. So we are not seeing that yet. We are seeing a ton of learning, and maybe separately we can go into a deeper dive on just some of the boring details. I think you would find some of it interesting. But that will start to bear fruit in the coming months. But at this point, it's really about kind of building that -- here is what a small tweak looks like. Someplace you might see that Aaron, where you might have visibly seen it is in some of the things we are doing with the park pages.

  • Aaron Fuchs - Analyst

  • Right, right. And -- but there seems to have been -- you don't think this would be a step function where once it's done, you would see some sort of quick result? Why --

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • No, no. I don't think it would be a step function at all. In fact, I think it will be a slow and accelerating growth. Once you find kind of one vein that you can mine, then inside of that vein, you can start to optimize conversions, optimize copy, optimize landing pages. All of those various pieces. So, I think it's something that is more like a snowball than a step function.

  • Aaron Fuchs - Analyst

  • Right. And then Butterscotch and the content business. Can you give a little more detail on where you are getting sales in Butterscotch and how the base Tucows.com business is doing?

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • So there's a couple things there. First of all, before I talk about -- probably three comments I will make. Let me start with sales in Butterscotch. I think that we are now starting to see some progress around some of the corporate video work we have been doing. We had in the quarter our first couple of repeat customers. Large corporate customers that we have done corporate video for that have now come back a second time. We have added a couple new customers. There again, it's very snowball-like, and Q3 is the worst quarter in the year, especially in that business. That has the July, August months, which are typically very bad for advertising.

  • More impressively, the traffic on the Butterscotch side, both in terms of the site proper and the growth of its YouTube channel have been very, very impressive. And one of the things that that's now there's been a bit of a halo effect there where for the first time in a long time, we've actually seen the old Tucows.com traffic start tick up. And that was a very encouraging sign for us. So if you have been watching the, sort of looking at the sites, you'll see -- you'd be seeing slightly more cross traffic driving slightly more integrations, and that's really bearing fruit. The traffic driven from Tucows to Butterscotch and from Butterscotch to Tucows, because we are pushing it both ways, has actually nearly tripled Q3 over Q1. And it's a not insignificant number. I didn't want to talk about in the body here of the call -- I didn't want to talk about traffic numbers, because they don't translate directly into revenue so quickly. But we are really seeing impressive traffic growth there and in the ways that we like to, which is kind of that core thesis of being able to build this video business using that base -- that old base of Tucows.com customers really does seem to be playing out well.

  • Aaron Fuchs - Analyst

  • And are you seeing any synergy or pull through from your wholesale customers in domains and E-mail? Do they want the video content for their customer service or any other type --

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • There's been a couple of very good discussions there, and we have got the makings of the first couple deals there. One thing you will see Aaron, is if you look in the Hover help section now, there is over 100, almost 150 Butterscotch-like tutorials that are produced with the same people, and that is giving us a great kind of demo showcase for those wholesale customers. And they see it and like it. I think you will see our use of that internally, and some of the synergies there accelerate. We think that we can be doing a much better job of helping people understand the benefit of personal names or premium names using video than we are doing today, for example.

  • Aaron Fuchs - Analyst

  • Great, thanks for your time.

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • Thanks, Aaron.

  • Operator

  • Mr. Noss, there are no further questions at this time. Please continue.

  • Elliot Noss - President, CEO

  • Great. Thanks everybody, and we look forward to seeing you all next quarter.

  • Operator

  • Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.