VVRSNVeriSign, Inc.

VeriSign operates the .com domain registry — infrastructure without which much of the internet does not open.

The company does not sell domains to end users: it maintains the registry and charges a fixed annual fee per name, whoever registered it. The right to run the registry is fixed by a contract that renews almost automatically, and the price ceiling is written into the same contract — tariff growth is capped and known in advance.

Hence a business with almost no variable costs and profitability unreachable for an ordinary company: maintaining the infrastructure costs the same at any number of names. The price of that is the absence of growth: the domain count fluctuates with the activity of small sites and Chinese registrars. The company pays no dividend, directing all free cash into buybacks.