GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) reported third-quarter revenue of $1,341.8 million, up 6% from a year earlier and $6.8 million above the top of the range it gave in July. Its AI website builder, Airo, passed an annualized bookings run rate of $100 million, double the $50 million it reported a quarter earlier. Applications and Commerce, the software segment GoDaddy is counting on, grew 9%, below the low double-digit growth it had forecast for the quarter, and the company now expects that segment to grow approximately 10% for the year.
The shares barely moved. They closed down 0.61% at $105.89 in regular trading, before the results, and slipped another 0.37% to $105.50 after hours, Investing.com reported at 6:35 p.m. ET on October 29.
The quarter against the forecast
GoDaddy had guided to revenue of $1,315 million to $1,335 million in its second-quarter release on July 30, and warned that the third quarter was its "toughest comparison against strong Aftermarket performance" a year earlier. Revenue came in $16.8 million, or 1.3%, above the midpoint. The normalized EBITDA margin, a non-GAAP measure, was 33.5% against the approximately 33% it had guided.
The beat came from the older business. Core Platform, which holds domains and the aftermarket where used domain names are resold, grew 4.2% to $817.5 million. GoDaddy's aftermarket revenue rose 10% on the year despite the hard comparison, Domain Name Wire reported, and primary domains revenue rose 6%. Chief financial officer Mark McCaffrey said in his prepared remarks that Core grew "on a strong Aftermarket, overcoming a tough compare, driven by increased volume of high-value transactions."
Q3, $M | 2026 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
Revenue | 1,341.8 | 1,265.3 | +6.0% |
A&C revenue | 524.3 | 481.0 | +9.0% |
Core revenue | 817.5 | 784.3 | +4.2% |
Bookings | 1,431.7 | 1,354.5 | +5.7% |
GAAP op. income | 362.5 | 296.7 | +22.2% |
GAAP net income | 261.8 | 210.5 | +24.4% |
GAAP diluted EPS | $2.08 | $1.51 | +37.7% |
NEBITDA | 449.3 | 408.6 | +10.0% |
Free cash flow | 480.8 | 440.5 | +9.1% |
Source: GoDaddy's third-quarter release. NEBITDA (normalized EBITDA) and free cash flow are non-GAAP. Changes are SaasBuzz calculations from the reported figures.
Earnings per share grew far faster than profit because the share count shrank. Diluted weighted shares fell 9.6% from a year earlier, by SaasBuzz's arithmetic, after GoDaddy bought back $1.4 billion of stock this year through October 26, including $477 million in the third quarter. That is about equal to the $1,397.9 million of free cash flow it generated in the first nine months. GAAP diluted EPS of $2.08 compared with a consensus of $1.90 that MarketBeat attributed to FiscalAI.
Why Applications and Commerce slowed
Applications and Commerce, which sells websites, email, payments and other tools to small businesses, carries the higher margin: segment EBITDA of 46.9% of its revenue, against 32.9% in Core. It produced 39.1% of revenue but 47.8% of the two segments' combined EBITDA in the quarter. Its growth has slowed in each of the four quarters since the third quarter of 2025.
Quarter | A&C growth | Core growth |
|---|---|---|
Q3 2025 | 13.7% | 8.3% |
Q4 2025 | 12.8% | 3.3% |
Q1 2026 | 11.6% | 2.8% |
Q2 2026 | 11.0% | 3.9% |
Q3 2026 | 9.0% | 4.2% |
Source: GoDaddy's quarterly results releases, revenue growth from a year earlier as reported.
GoDaddy's explanation is Airo itself. The company made Airo its flagship website product this year, replacing Websites + Marketing, and McCaffrey said segment revenue growth was "partially offset by the ongoing transition of customers to Airo from Websites + Marketing that we began in the first quarter." Many existing customers moved to Airo's starter tier on annual plans; he said higher unit volume and token credits "more than offset the lower price point of this entry-level tier."
Bookings, which lead revenue, point the other way. A&C bookings grew 8%, up from 7% in the second quarter, McCaffrey said. Chief executive Aman Bhutani said Airo's bookings now more than cover what the company loses as customers leave the older website products.
Even more encouraging, Airo incrementally contributed to our bookings growth this quarter, as its bookings more than offset the impacts of migration of our legacy website products.Aman Bhutani, CEO of GoDaddy, in prepared remarks published October 29, 2026
For proportion, a $100 million run rate is about 1.75% of GoDaddy's total bookings at the third quarter's pace, $5.73 billion a year, by SaasBuzz's arithmetic. McCaffrey said Airo's unit growth came largely before late in the quarter, when Airo was introduced in the domain purchase path, which he called the company's largest funnel. Bhutani said GoDaddy is stepping up marketing behind the change, with the extra fourth-quarter spending offset by savings elsewhere in the business.
Bhutani also described a harder market. "As this new demand grows, we are also seeing sharper discounting across the industry on products like domains, along with freemium offers on hosting," he said, after noting that new customers increasingly start inside AI coding assistants, command line tools and agent interfaces. GoDaddy plans to test new bundles with competitive offers as it moves into 2027, and has launched agent-friendly APIs spanning domains, hosting, professional email and commerce. SaasBuzz has looked at how AI spending is splitting software results this season in its comparison of AI infrastructure and SaaS companies.
What the outlook implies
GoDaddy kept its full-year revenue range of $5,215 million to $5,255 million and said it now expects to finish "toward the higher end," which McCaffrey tied to aftermarket outperformance in the first three quarters. It reaffirmed a normalized EBITDA margin above 33% and free cash flow of approximately $1.8 billion. In July it had forecast A&C growth "in the low double-digits" and Core growth "in the low single-digits"; it now says approximately 10% and approximately 4%.
The fourth quarter, by SaasBuzz's calculation from the reported nine-month figures and last year's totals:
Revenue at the top of the range implies about $1,348 million, up 5.8% from $1,273.9 million a year earlier. The midpoint implies growth of 4.3%.
A&C growth of exactly 10% for the year implies fourth-quarter segment revenue of about $541 million, up 8.6%, a further slowdown from 9%. The segment grew 10.5% in the first nine months.
Core growth of exactly 4% implies about 5% growth in the fourth quarter, against 3.3% a year earlier.
McCaffrey said he expects fourth-quarter bookings growth to "accelerate and be slightly ahead of revenue growth," driven by Airo units in A&C. GoDaddy will refresh select financial targets at an investor night at its headquarters in Tempe, Arizona, on December 1.
