[gnso-vi-feb10] A 2% cap applied to the existing, competing RSPs, as RO applicants

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Colleagues,

Verisign has 182.50M shares outstanding, currently selling in the
$28.15 to $29.15 price range, for a total market cap of 5.16B.

To create a registrar holding of VGRS equity sufficient to meet the 2%
test will require one or more registrars to acquire approximately
3.65M shares, at a cost of $105.85M.

In August of 2008 GoDaddy announced a quarterly cash flow of $14M.

TuCows reported a net revenue of $20.4M for 1Q2010.

NetSol currently has a market cap of $1M.

I've no idea what eNom / Demand Media has on hand, but I suspect it
has higher ROI goals than a wasteage buy of VGRS equity.

So I conclude that VGRS will not be affected by a 2% cap, as it would
cost GoDaddy alone almost two years of cash flow, some of which arises
from the sale of VGRS inventories.

As for NeuLevel/NeuStar, I'm not in a position to offer informed
comment. It too may be unaffected by a 2% cap.

Afilias is affected by a 2% cap.

CORE is not, absent an purposed reading of a nuance, having 60+
independent voting members of the association.

The 2% cap appears to eliminate at least one of the four principle
RSPs as applicants to obtain or add to their existing inventory of RO
contracts, while leaving the incumbent monopoly unified RSP-RO
unrestricted.

The "zero cap" articulated in Board Resolution #5 at Nairobi would
affect all four RSPs, as would any cap smaller than a 0.0002% cap,
which is about $1M as an investment in VGRS by one or more registrars
interested in preventing VGRS from escaping the effect of a cap rule.

I've written this in response to the observation that "... if safety
from possible harm is our primary concern then we must stick with the
DAGv4 implementation ...", as independent of the effect this cap has
on entities we do not know exist, it has a clear effect on entities we
know do exist, eliminating at least one, and promoting at least one,
with no discernible correlation with harm, though with obvious
correlation to market share.

Eric