Major ClientsWide moat
VeriSign (VRSN) — moat facet
Thirty-one percent from one customer, and the filing states plainly that losing it would not matter.
VeriSign has the most concentrated customer base in this collection and the least to fear from it, and the company says so in its own accounts.
The disclosure is one sentence long. "The Company's largest customer accounted for approximately 31% of revenues in 2025, and approximately 32% of revenues in 2024 and 2023."1 Then comes the part that has no equivalent anywhere else in these pages: "The Company does not believe that the loss of this customer would have a material adverse effect on the Company's business because, in that event, end-users of this customer would transfer to the Company's other existing customers."
Read that against every other Major Clients page in this collection. Nvidia's two largest direct customers are 36% of revenue and the filing warns the trend may continue. Arista's top two are 42% and the concentration is migrating between them. CoreWeave gets 67% from Microsoft. In each case the risk is that the customer leaves and takes the revenue. Here, VeriSign is telling you the revenue would stay and only the name on the invoice would change — because the customer is a registrar, and the person who actually owns the domain is loyal to the domain, not to the shop that sold it.
That is the whole structure of the business, expressed as an accounting note. VeriSign has more than three thousand accredited registrars as customers4 and about 179 million registrants as end-users, and it has a commercial relationship with the first group and no relationship at all with the second.2 It does not know who owns the names, cannot market to them, cannot upsell them, and — under the vertical-integration restrictions in the .com agreement — cannot sell to them directly even if it wanted to.3
What it gets in exchange is a customer base that cannot meaningfully churn. A registrar can stop reselling .com, and its customers will simply buy .com somewhere else. A registrar can go out of business, and ICANN's bulk-transfer process moves the names to another registrar overnight. In thirty years no registrar failure has cost VeriSign revenue.
There is one relationship in the set that runs the other way, and it is the one that matters most: ICANN. VeriSign pays ICANN $0.2575 per .com registration per year, which on roughly 163 million names is on the order of $42 million annually — money flowing from the regulated to the regulator, in a structure where the regulator's budget depends on the volume of the thing it regulates.
The rating here is wide, and it is the rare case where extreme concentration argues for the moat rather than against it.
The largest customer was approximately 31% of revenues in 2025 against 32% in each of the two prior years, and the structural reason it does not matter — registrants transfer between registrars without leaving .com — is unchanged. This is the most static relationship in the company.
And the accompanying sentence has no equivalent anywhere else in this collection: VeriSign does not believe losing this customer would have a material adverse effect, because the end-users would transfer to its other existing customers. The registrant is loyal to the name, not to the shop that sold it. Watch nothing here — the point is that there is nothing to watch.
Source: VeriSign Form 10-K, FY2025 ↗- ReportedThe Company's largest customer accounted for approximately 31% of revenues in 2025 and approximately 32% in 2024 and 2023, and the Company does not believe the loss of this customer would have a material adverse effect because end-users of that customer would transfer to its other existing customers.VeriSign, Inc., Form 10-K FY2025 — Item 8, consolidated financial statements and notes. Net income $825.7M (2024 $785.7M, 2023 $817.6M); diluted EPS $8.81 ($8.00, $7.90) on 93.8 million diluted shares (98.2, 103.5); income before income taxes $1,068.5M; income tax expense $242.8M. Balance sheet at 31 December 2025: cash and cash equivalents $307.9M, marketable securities $272.6M, property and equipment net $213.7M, goodwill $52.5M, deferred tax assets $233.2M, deposits to acquire intangible assets $145.2M, total assets $1,325.9M; accounts payable and accrued liabilities $298.0M, deferred revenues $1,035.1M current and $349.4M long-term, long-term senior notes $1,788.2M, total current liabilities $1,333.1M — a total stockholders' deficit with an accumulated deficit above $11.3 billion. Net cash provided by operating activities $1,091.1M; the deferred revenues balance increased $80.2M in 2025 ($58.1M in 2024, $27.0M in 2023) and $934.7M of revenue recognised in 2025 had been in the opening deferred balance. Major customers note: the largest customer accounted for approximately 31% of revenues in 2025 and approximately 32% in 2024 and 2023, and the Company does not believe the loss of this customer would have a material adverse effect because end-users would transfer to its other existing customers. Dividends of $0.77 per share were declared in each of the three quarters from the second quarter of 2025, totalling $2.31 per share and $215.2M, accounted for as a reduction of additional paid-in capital; a dividend of $0.81 per share was declared on 3 February 2026. — FY2025 · publ. 2026-02-05 · source ↗
- ReportedVeriSign sells through ICANN-accredited registrars, which set retail pricing, and there were 179.1 million .com and .net registrations in the base.VeriSign, Inc., Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025 (SEC, CIK 1014473) — Item 1, Business. VeriSign operates the .com and .net registries under registry agreements with ICANN, and .com additionally under a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce (most recently amended by Amendment 35 on 26 October 2018, automatically renewed on the same terms on 30 November 2024 for a successive six-year term, renewing again on 30 November 2030 unless the DOC gives notice). The .com Registry Agreement runs a six-year term that must be renewed or extended by 30 November 2030 and contains a presumptive right of renewal, with ICANN able to terminate or refuse in certain prescribed circumstances; it permits an increase to the Maximum Price of up to 7% over the previous year in each of the final four years of each six-year period, the current period having begun on 26 October 2024. The .net Registry Agreement was renewed on 29 June 2023, runs to 1 July 2029 and permits increases of up to 10% each year. VeriSign remits $0.2575 to ICANN quarterly for each annual .com registration and $0.25 for each .name registration. It also operates .cc under an agreement with the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, operates .name and internationalised gTLDs, provides back-end services for .edu, performs the Root Zone Maintainer function for ICANN and operates two of the thirteen global internet root servers. Retail pricing is established by registrars; VeriSign must provide ICANN-accredited registrars with non-discriminatory access, faces marketing and bundling limits, must submit new Registry Services for ICANN review, and is subject to vertical-integration restrictions that apply solely to .com — obligations it states do not apply to ccTLDs and other gTLDs and may create a competitive disadvantage. Named registry competitors include CentralNic, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), DENIC eG, GoDaddy, Google, Identity Digital, Nominet, Public Interest Registry, Radix and .xyz. Employee headcount 928 (256 cost of revenues, 240 research and development, 432 selling, general and administrative). — FY2025 · publ. 2026-02-05 · source ↗
- ReportedVertical-integration restrictions applying solely to .com prevent VeriSign from selling registrations directly, and VeriSign remits $0.2575 to ICANN quarterly for each annual .com registration.VeriSign, Inc., Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025 (SEC, CIK 1014473) — Item 1, Business. VeriSign operates the .com and .net registries under registry agreements with ICANN, and .com additionally under a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce (most recently amended by Amendment 35 on 26 October 2018, automatically renewed on the same terms on 30 November 2024 for a successive six-year term, renewing again on 30 November 2030 unless the DOC gives notice). The .com Registry Agreement runs a six-year term that must be renewed or extended by 30 November 2030 and contains a presumptive right of renewal, with ICANN able to terminate or refuse in certain prescribed circumstances; it permits an increase to the Maximum Price of up to 7% over the previous year in each of the final four years of each six-year period, the current period having begun on 26 October 2024. The .net Registry Agreement was renewed on 29 June 2023, runs to 1 July 2029 and permits increases of up to 10% each year. VeriSign remits $0.2575 to ICANN quarterly for each annual .com registration and $0.25 for each .name registration. It also operates .cc under an agreement with the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, operates .name and internationalised gTLDs, provides back-end services for .edu, performs the Root Zone Maintainer function for ICANN and operates two of the thirteen global internet root servers. Retail pricing is established by registrars; VeriSign must provide ICANN-accredited registrars with non-discriminatory access, faces marketing and bundling limits, must submit new Registry Services for ICANN review, and is subject to vertical-integration restrictions that apply solely to .com — obligations it states do not apply to ccTLDs and other gTLDs and may create a competitive disadvantage. Named registry competitors include CentralNic, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), DENIC eG, GoDaddy, Google, Identity Digital, Nominet, Public Interest Registry, Radix and .xyz. Employee headcount 928 (256 cost of revenues, 240 research and development, 432 selling, general and administrative). — FY2025 · publ. 2026-02-05 · source ↗
- ReportedICANN's public directory lists 3,323 accredited registrars.ICANN — List of Accredited Registrars. The public directory of ICANN-accredited registrars lists 3,323 accreditations; a smaller number of companies hold them, since large registrars operate under multiple accreditation IDs. — August 2026 · publ. 2026-08-27 · source ↗