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 2026 Earnings Call — April 30, 2026
The most recent call: Airo AI Builder monetizing within weeks of beta, Agent Name Service pitched as a new domain-like identity layer for AI agents, and buybacks defended against a rising cash balance. · Open the full transcript →
Airo AI Builder hit a $10M+ annualized bookings run rate within weeks of beta, monetizing through subscriptions plus usage credits.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: This new Airo AI Builder product offering has rapidly scaled to $10 million plus in annualized bookings run rate within weeks of its beta launch. While still early, the pace of adoption and quality of customer interaction is strong. Customers are building, publishing and purchasing incremental credits as they deepen their use of the product.
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ANS a quarter on: partnerships signed and non-GoDaddy agents 'in the thousands' — early proof domains can extend into an agentic web.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: The second component of our AI transformation is Agent Name Service or ANS. We are working with large players and seeing continued interest in this technology. ANS extends the role of domains as a digital identity provider in an Agentic Open Web. We signed a couple of partnerships over the last quarter with real-world use cases and are working hard on aligning key players on the open standard and the use of Domain Name Service or DNS for agent identity and discovery. Championing the open standard and partnerships are key to getting to critical mass of support of the open standard and we are encouraged by early results. Non-GoDaddy agents in GoDaddy's ANS implementation now number in the thousands.
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The monetization engine: high-intent acquisition, pruning low-value products, and Airo cohorts attaching a second product 30% faster.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO: Our focus on attracting and growing high-intent customers combined with conversion improvements is driving durable growth and higher customer quality. We are driving increased conversion into primary domains and higher attach through Airo. At the same time, we continue to deliberately manage our product portfolio, exiting lower-value offerings and reallocating resources towards higher value opportunities. And our newer Airo cohorts are demonstrating that higher value with second product attach accelerating 30% faster relative to non-Airo cohorts.
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Capital-allocation policy, quantified: over 95% of free cash flow returned through buybacks across the last four years.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO: 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. Our continued commitment to returning capital is a clear expression of confidence and the strength of our cash flow and the long-term value we are creating.
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Pressed on light Q1 buybacks with cash at a multi-year high — management says judge the track record, not any single quarter.
Trevor Young (Barclays); Mark McCaffrey, CFO: 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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Q4 2025 Earnings Call — February 24, 2026
The full-year 2025 call and the AI-strategy reset: a deliberate .com promo that dented near-term bookings to widen the funnel, the moat case for a 30-year data advantage, and the discipline holding margins as AI spend rises. · Open the full transcript →
The year's big bet and its bill: a .com promo to widen the funnel drew more demand than expected, cutting near-term bookings and revenue.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: 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 structural story in numbers: ~1,000 bps of margin expansion over five years converting better than 1:1 into 19% free-cash-flow growth.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO: 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 margins hold as AI spend rises: all AI costs run through one interface for visibility, and products built to a customer-viable cost.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: 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.
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The moat vs. AI-native entrants: brand, the domains funnel, and nearly 2 billion daily data points to tune agents to each customer.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: Our competitive advantages, of course, start with our brand. It starts with our domains funnel, the scale of our platform, and the data we have about interaction with our customers, whether it's like 1.7 billion, almost 2 billion data points selected on a daily basis, all the way from interaction on the site to customers calling and chat transcripts and all of that. And we have that data globally.
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On 'vibe coding' rivals: they mostly chase enterprise users, not GoDaddy's micro-businesses — 'not immune,' but little funnel impact yet.
Arjun Bhatia (William Blair); Aman Bhutani, CEO: 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 2025 Earnings Call — October 30, 2025
The landmark agentic-pivot call: Agent Name Service launched as an identity layer for AI agents, Airo.ai and 'vibe coding' builders unveiled, and the clearest statement of the domain registrar's 'right to win.' · Open the full transcript →
Agent Name Service launched: verifiable identities for AI agents, built on DNS as an open standard — staking the agentic-identity claim.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: Working back from that vision, we launched GoDaddy's Agent Name Service or ANS. Built on DNS infrastructure and proposed as an open standard. GoDaddy's ANS provides verifiable identities for AI agents. By registering agents with ANS, value is immediately created for publishers by providing their agents with a verifiable identity. Value is also created for consumers of ANS since they can securely discover and validate agents across the open web. While many companies are beginning to explore this idea, we are excited to be leading the way.
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The North Star and its engine: on track to beat a 20% FCF CAGR, powered by a $500+ high-retention cohort now ~10% of the base, ARPU +10%.
Mark McCaffrey, CFO: Taken together, we are on track to exceed our Investor Day North Star commitment of a 20% CAGR. How are we getting there? As Aman mentioned, our strategy that elevates GoDaddy Airo as our primary customer engagement engine is hitting its stride. High-intent customers are adopting more products, spending more and generating higher lifetime value. Our $500-plus customer cohort now represents approximately 10% of our base, and this cohort has higher attach and near perfect retention, boosting our ARPU up 10% to $237.
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How work changes: 3–5-person teams ship with ~90% AI-written code — the bottleneck shifts from writing code to everything around it.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: Now what we're seeing is teams of 3 to 5 that are using AI in the new products, 90% of the code ultimately is being written by AI. So the inefficiencies are really less and less in writing the code part and it's everything else around it.
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Its right to win, by analogy to SSL: the domain start-point plus certificate-authority role make DNS-anchored ANS its claim on agent trust.
Ken Wong (Oppenheimer); Aman Bhutani, CEO: We think back to the past, it was clear you guys had a right to win in SSL, given that the website journey starts with the domain, starts with GoDaddy. Help us understand what the rationale might be for why GoDaddy can serve a similar purpose in the Agentic Internet? […] If we look back to the advent of the Internet, the solution to the identity issue wasn't just websites; it was domains and DNS that initially addressed it. Agents need to be registered so that different companies, domains, or systems can trust and verify the claims made by these agents. This is the role of the Agent Name Service. By linking it to the DNS infrastructure, one of the fundamental building blocks of the Internet, we are leveraging the core principles of how the Internet functions. The Agent Name Service goes beyond just registration; it can embed certificates, and since GoDaddy is also a certificate authority, these certificates are integrated.
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Q3 2024 Earnings Call — October 30, 2024
Airo moves from promise to proof — the paywall mechanic and 40% of new website subscriptions originating in Airo — plus the clearest explanation of how pricing-and-bundling actually works. · Open the full transcript →
Airo's first hard proof: ~3M customers reached, over half engaged, and 40%+ of new Websites + Marketing subscriptions now originate in Airo.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: Nearly 3 million customers have discovered Airo with over half of them engaging with the experience. We are pleased with the momentum in discovery and engagement, and just as exciting are the proof points we are driving in Airo monetization. With many months of data, we can clearly see that the largest engagement winner is website building. Over half of engaged users published a coming soon page, which is a customizable one-page website. Customers engaged with Airo are quickly becoming the largest funnel for websites plus marketing; with over 40% of websites plus marketing paid subscriptions in Q3 originating with the Airo experience.
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How pricing works: test price points to map the elasticity curve, pick cohorts balancing churn vs. upside — now reaching Core Platform.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: 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. […] So what I'm really talking about here is that we have identified other cohorts of customers that we will be applying this approach to. Some of those are going to have products that sit in the Core Platform, which is now going to take sort of the benefit of pricing and bundling across both segments.
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The monetization mechanic: an in-context paywall at the moment of engagement pulls attach forward from months later — and drives that 40%.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: 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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Engagement, not discovery, is the quality metric — and Airo was deliberately kept out of the 3-year plan to build the funnel first.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: As we spend in marketing, discovery will definitely go up, but we don't want engagement as a percentage to drop. Engaged customers enter the monetization phase in a much more favorable manner than non-engaged customers. Metrics like attached conversion do much better for engaged users than they do for non-engaged users. That's if you will, the quality metric. […] we purposefully put Airo outside of the three-year planning because we wanted to build a very large mode of discovery and engagement. That very large mode will generate sort of recurrence for years to come.
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On the WP Engine–Automattic WordPress feud: GoDaddy calls WordPress 'here to stay,' casting itself as a top contributor, not a bystander.
Clarke Jeffries (Piper Sandler); Aman Bhutani, CEO: there is a notable market event in the last quarter, a disagreement between a Managed WordPress vendor and the largest contributor to WordPress. Aman, do you see that as largely irrelevant to the long-term progress of WordPress? Have you seen any kind of conversations with your customers or partners that reacted to that? […] Our focus is really to build magical experiences on top of the WordPress platform, which is the largest content management system in the world. We believe that WordPress is here to stay. We are one of the top contributors and we're part of the WordPress community. We want to harness the power of WordPress and provide seamless experiences for our users, including enhanced functionalities.
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Q4 2023 Earnings Call — February 13, 2024
The foundational call: the A&C / Core Platform model, the attach → retention → LTV engine, Airo's launch and first monetization proof, payments scaling, and the free-cash-flow-per-share North Star with its buyback engine. · Open the full transcript →
Airo's first controlled test: the test cohort out-monetized the control group at once — via attach and a shift to higher-margin products.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: 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.
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The commerce proof: GoDaddy can sell payments into its own base — 2023 annualized GPV grew 125%, its largest driver of payments growth.
Aman Bhutani, CEO: On Commerce, over the last year we proved that we can sell our payments solutions into our customer base, and it was the largest driver of GPV growth last year. In fact, annualized GPV for 2023 exceeded our expectations and grew a 125% year-over-year.
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The capital-return engine: $2.6B / 34.2M shares retired cut the diluted count over 20% — the three-year target hit ahead of schedule.
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.
Our buybacks over the last two years have driven impressive ROI for this capital outlay, demonstrating our disciplined capital allocation framework and dedication to driving long-term shareholder value.
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The core economic engine: second- and third-product attach powers high-margin A&C; retention rises from 85% to 'almost a customer for life.'
Mark McCaffrey, CFO: 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.
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More calls
Q2 2025 Earnings Call — August 7, 2025 · 11 pages · The first hard quantification of the $500+ 'near-perfect-retention' cohort (~9% of the base) and the most direct rebuttal to AI 'vibe coding' competition; the .co registry walk-away as a discipline signal. · Open →
Q1 2025 Earnings Call — May 1, 2025 · 10 pages · The new $3B buyback authorization and sub-3x leverage target, plus the clearest walk-through of the free-Airo → Airo Plus upsell mechanic. · Open →
Q4 2024 Earnings Call — February 13, 2025 · 16 pages · Full-year 2024 results against the March-2024 Investor Day targets — the margin and free-cash-flow print that reset the bar for 2025. · Open →
Q2 2024 Earnings Call — August 1, 2024 · 13 pages · Capital-allocation priorities ranked against the FCF North Star, and the three structural EBITDA-margin tailwinds spelled out. · Open →
Q1 2024 Earnings Call — May 2, 2024 · 13 pages · The first call after the March 2024 Investor Day, testing the newly framed North Star and long-term margin targets. · Open →
Q3 2023 Earnings Call — November 2, 2023 · 12 pages · The pre-Airo integration era: margin expansion from unifying the software platform and rationalizing non-core hosting. · Open →
Q2 2023 Earnings Call — August 3, 2023 · 12 pages · Early evidence that the platform unification was lifting attach and A&C margin, ahead of the Airo launch. · Open →
Q1 2022 Earnings Call — May 5, 2022 · 29 pages · Where GoDaddy reframed reporting into two segments (Applications & Commerce and Core Platform) and laid out the three-year plan and $6+ FCF-per-share goal. · Open →