GoDaddy reports 2021 revenue growth of 15%

GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE: GDDY) reported financial results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2021.

“GoDaddy accelerated its pace of execution across the business in 2021 and delivered another great year of results,” said GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani. “Strong receptivity to our recent OmniCommerce launch shows how we can grow the value we deliver to our customers, and we’re excited to continue on our mission of helping small businesses succeed in the year ahead.”

“GoDaddy delivered strong financial results in 2021, including generating over $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in the company’s history,” said GoDaddy CFO Mark McCaffrey. “We’re also pleased to announce a $3 billion share repurchase plan, with the intent to launch a $750M accelerated share repurchase in the first quarter of 2022.”

Business Updates

• In January, GoDaddy named Roger Chen as Chief Operating Officer. Roger has a proven track record of leadership, execution and operational excellence as demonstrated by his most recent successful tenure as President of the company’s Domain Registrars and Investors business.
• GoDaddy’s OmniCommerce shows strong signals of adoption within first quarter of launch. Over a thousand point-of-sale devices sold and tens of thousands of GoDaddy Payments applications from customers. 60% of customers with the commerce tier of Websites + Marketing and nearly a quarter of our Managed WordPress customers with commerce enabled have adopted GoDaddy Payments over well-known competitors.
• Annualized recurring revenue (ARR) from GoDaddy’s “Create and Grow” group of products, which includes Websites + Marketing, Managed WordPress, Sellbrite, and GoDaddy Studios, surpassed $410 million, growing 19% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2021.
• GoDaddy’s Websites + Marketing ARR grew more than 20% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2021.
• The commerce tier of GoDaddy’s Websites + Marketing ARR grew 24% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2021.
• GoDaddy sees strong growth in its commerce offerings with gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $26 billion, up 21% year over year on a proforma basis.
• In January, GoDaddy launched Social Site, GoDaddy Studio’s bio site tool. Users can generate a personalized “go.studio” link to a simple, free site where they can aggregate links to their entire online presence, helping them grow their business by driving traffic to their top content.
• During the fourth quarter, GoDaddy acquired Pagely, a leader in Managed WordPress. GoDaddy plans to build a world-class WooCommerce SaaS platform providing the highest levels of reliability, scalability, flexibility, security and performance.
• GoDaddy launched several Pro Hub enhancements including: priority care ticketing, commission-based incentives, percent-based pricing for new reseller customers, a drastically simplified product pricing process, and client reporting capabilities.
• For the fourth year in a row, The Human Rights Campaign awarded GoDaddy a perfect score in its 2022 Corporate Equality Index.

Balance Sheet

At December 31, 2021, total cash and cash equivalents were $1,255.7 million, total debt was $3,921.2 million and net debt was $2,665.5 million.

Business Outlook

For the first quarter ending March 31, 2022, GoDaddy expects total revenue in the range of $985 million to $990 million, representing year over year growth of 10% at the midpoint, versus last year.

For the full year ending December 31, 2022, GoDaddy expects total revenue in the range of $4.14 billion to $4.16 billion, representing year over year growth of 9% at the midpoint, versus the $3.82 billion of revenue generated in 2021.

GoDaddy expects unlevered free cash flow of approximately $1.1 billion, representing growth of 15%, year over year, versus the $960 million of unlevered free cash generated in 2021.

Our consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (GAAP). GoDaddy does not provide reconciliations from non-GAAP guidance to GAAP, because projections of changes in individual balance sheet amounts are not possible without unreasonable effort, and presentation of such reconciliations would imply an inappropriate degree of precision. Our reported results provide reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to their nearest GAAP equivalents.