GoDaddy's Q2 2026 revenue rose 6.6% to $1.30B on 11% growth in Applications & Commerce. Diluted EPS jumped 29.8% to $1.83 on lower costs, a sharp fall in amortization and a 7% smaller share count.
Revenue
$1.3B
+6.6% YoY
Net income
$240M
+20.1% YoY
Diluted EPS
$1.83
+29.8% YoY
Operating margin
26.4%
Q2 2026 in brief: 7% revenue growth, 30% EPS growth
GoDaddy grew revenue 6.6% to $1,298.0 million in the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (6.3% in constant currency, i.e. stripping out exchange-rate moves). Profit grew much faster: operating income rose 28.6% to $342.5 million and diluted earnings per share (EPS, profit divided by shares) rose 29.8% to $1.83. Three things explain the gap between 7% sales growth and 30% EPS growth: operating costs outside cost of revenue fell, amortization of old acquisitions dropped by more than half, and the company bought back about 7% of its diluted share count. A higher tax rate pushed the other way.
The growth came mainly from Applications & Commerce, GoDaddy's website-builder, commerce and email segment, which grew 11.0%. The larger Core Platform segment (domain names, hosting, security) grew 3.9%, and more than a third of that increase came from aftermarket domain sales: one-off resales of existing domain names, which swing from quarter to quarter.
Key metrics
Metric
Q2 2026
Q2 2025
YoY Change
Total revenue
$1,298.0M
$1,217.6M
+6.6%
Applications & Commerce revenue
$514.8M
$463.9M
+11.0%
Core Platform revenue
$783.2M
$753.7M
+3.9%
Operating income
$342.5M
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Some of these terms need explaining. Bookings is the value of customer contracts signed in the quarter. GoDaddy usually collects the full payment up front, for example for a multi-year domain registration, and then recognizes it as revenue over the life of the contract, so bookings are an early signal of where revenue is heading. ARR is the annualized value of subscription revenue in the quarter; it excludes one-off sales such as aftermarket domains. ARPU (average revenue per user) is revenue over the past 12 months divided by the average number of customers. Free cash flow here is operating cash flow minus equipment purchases, with cash paid for restructuring added back (that add-back was $6.1 million this quarter).
Where the growth came from
Applications & Commerce (+11.0%, +$50.9M). The 10-Q attributes all of this to "continued customer adoption of our subscription-based products." This is also the more profitable segment: Segment EBITDA (the segment's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) rose 17.2% to $241.1 million. Its margin went from 44.4% to 46.8%, because revenue grew $50.9 million while the segment's cost of revenue rose only $11.2 million.
Core Platform (+3.9%, +$29.5M). The filing breaks the increase down as $22.6 million from domain registrations and add-ons and $10.4 million from aftermarket domain sales. Core Segment EBITDA rose 6.4% to $261.9 million, a 33.4% margin (up from 32.7%).
Customers and pricing. Total customers were 20,457 thousand at June 30, only 35 thousand more than at December 31, 2025 (22 thousand of that came in Q2). Domains under management rose to 81,985 thousand from 80,793 thousand at year-end. With the customer count roughly flat, revenue growth depends on each customer spending more. That is what ARPU shows: up 8.7% to $250.
AI product. The earnings release says GoDaddy's AI product, Airo, reached a $50 million annualized bookings run rate, up from $10 million a quarter earlier. That is a fast increase, but multiplying Q2's $1,422.1 million of bookings by four gives about $5.7 billion a year, so Airo is still under 1% of bookings.
Why profit grew four times faster than revenue
Operating income rose $76.2 million on $80.4 million of extra revenue. The income statement shows why:
Cost line
Q2 2026
Q2 2025
Change
Cost of revenue (excl. D&A)
$469.8M
$442.3M
+$27.5M
Technology & development
$211.4M
$214.3M
-$2.9M
Marketing & advertising
$89.0M
$93.4M
-$4.4M
Customer care
$72.8M
$73.5M
-$0.7M
General & administrative
$90.5M
$96.9M
-$6.4M
Restructuring and other
$8.7M
$0.3M
+$8.4M
Depreciation & amortization
$13.3M
$30.6M
-$17.3M
Cost of revenue grew roughly in line with sales (+6.2%), so the gross profit margin barely changed.
The four main expense lines combined fell $14.4 million, from 39.3% of revenue to 35.7%. The 10-Q calls each individual change "no material change."
Amortization fell $17.3 million. This is an accounting charge that spreads the cost of past acquisitions over time. The 10-Q says the drop came from "certain intangible assets reaching the end of their useful lives." No cash is involved; the charge has simply finished running. On its own it accounts for about 6.5 percentage points of the 28.6% operating income growth. Excluding depreciation and amortization, operating income grew about 20% ($355.8M vs. $296.9M). That is still strong, but less dramatic than the headline.
Restructuring and other charges rose $8.4 million, which partly offsets the gains above.
Below operating income, tax pushed the other way. The tax charge nearly doubled, from $39.2 million to $76.9 million, which means the effective tax rate rose from about 16.4% to about 24.3% of pre-tax profit. The 10-Q says the increase came from higher pre-tax income and "a decrease in excess tax benefits related to stock-based compensation" (the extra tax deduction a company gets when employee stock awards are worth more at vesting than when granted). So pre-tax income grew 32.6% but net income grew only 20.1%. Share buybacks then added back to growth per share: diluted weighted shares fell 7.4% to 131.0 million from 141.4 million, which is why EPS (+29.8%) grew faster than net income.
For the first half of the year, net income grew only 8.4% ($454.7M vs. $419.4M). That is because the first half of 2025 included a one-time $34.6 million tax benefit, which makes the prior-year comparison unusually high.
Takeaway: GoDaddy's business is growing at about 6-7%. The near-30% EPS growth came mostly from spending discipline, an amortization charge that has run its course, and buybacks. Of those three, only the cost discipline can keep going on its own. The amortization drop will stop helping once it laps next year, and buybacks only continue while GoDaddy keeps spending most of its free cash flow on them.
Cash, buybacks and the balance sheet
Operating cash flow was $442.5 million (+16.5%) and free cash flow was $443.5 million (+13.3%). Deferred revenue, meaning cash already collected for services not yet delivered, rose to $3,510.9 million (current plus non-current) from $3,319.1 million at year-end. That growing prepaid balance is why cash generation keeps outpacing reported profit.
Almost all of that cash went to buybacks. In the first half, GoDaddy spent $824.4 million repurchasing shares against $917.1 million of free cash flow. By July 29 it had bought back 9.8 million shares for $851.8 million in 2026. The company says that is a 7% gross reduction in fully diluted shares since the start of the year. Because buybacks have exceeded earnings, total stockholders' equity fell to just $6.7 million from $215.1 million at year-end. Total debt was $3.8 billion and net debt (debt minus cash) was $2.7 billion. After the quarter ended, an August 4 8-K disclosed that GoDaddy replaced its $1.0 billion revolving credit line with a new $1.2 billion facility.
Outlook
Management's guidance from the Q2 earnings release:
Q3 2026 revenue: $1.315-$1.335 billion, about 5% growth at the midpoint. That is slower than Q2's 6.6%. The company says Q3 is its "toughest comparison against strong Aftermarket performance" a year earlier. It expects Q3 NEBITDA margin of about 33%. NEBITDA is the company's adjusted EBITDA, which also excludes stock compensation and restructuring.
Full-year 2026 revenue: narrowed to $5.215-$5.255 billion, about 6% growth at the midpoint versus $4.951 billion in 2025. It expects A&C growth in the low double digits and Core growth in the low single digits, for both Q3 and the full year.
Full-year NEBITDA margin above 33% (reaffirmed) and free cash flow of about $1.8 billion (reaffirmed), versus $1.6 billion in 2025.
GoDaddy will hold an Investor Night on December 1, 2026, where it plans to "refresh select financial targets."
Our read: The guidance fits the same pattern: mid-single-digit revenue growth, with A&C the only segment growing at double digits and Core's growth relying partly on lumpy aftermarket sales. Two things to watch in Q3. First, whether bookings keep growing at about 5-6%; bookings lead revenue, so a slowdown there would show up in revenue later. Second, whether customer count starts growing again, because the ARPU-driven model needs customers to keep spending more when the customer base is barely growing. Profit growth will probably slow as the amortization benefit fades and the tax rate stays near 24%. Buybacks funded by roughly $1.8 billion of free cash flow should keep per-share growth ahead of revenue growth.
Source: GoDaddy Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (filed July 31, 2026); guidance, Airo, buyback-to-date and free cash flow figures from the Q2 2026 earnings release (Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1, July 30, 2026).