GoDaddy Q3 Revenue Rises 6% as Airo Bookings Run Rate Tops $100 Million

GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE: GDDY) reported higher third-quarter revenue, profitability and free cash flow as its Airo artificial-intelligence platform gained traction. The company expects full-year 2026 revenue near the top of its $5.215 billion to $5.255 billion range, alongside a normalized EBITDA margin of at least 33% and approximately $1.8 billion in free cash flow.

Revenue for the quarter ended September 30 rose 6% year over year to $1.342 billion, above the $1.315 billion to $1.335 billion range provided with GoDaddy’s second-quarter results. Total bookings also increased 6% to $1.432 billion.

GAAP net income climbed to $261.8 million from $210.5 million, while net income margin expanded to 19.5% from 16.6%. Normalized EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, increased 10% to $449.3 million. Its margin reached 33.5%, up about 120 basis points from 32.3% a year earlier.

Free cash flow rose 9% to $480.8 million, compared with $440.5 million in the prior-year period. Net cash from operating activities was $487.7 million, while capital expenditures totaled $11.9 million. Trailing-12-month free cash flow reached $1.8 billion.

Applications and Commerce leads segment growth

Applications and Commerce revenue increased 9% to $524 million and represented roughly 40% of total revenue. GoDaddy expects the segment to grow about 10% for the full year.

Core Platform revenue advanced 4% to $818 million, accounting for about 60% of quarterly revenue. The company’s full-year outlook calls for approximately 4% growth in the segment.

Within Core Platform, primary domains revenue rose 6% to $486 million. Aftermarket revenue, which GoDaddy describes as transactional and subject to global macroeconomic conditions, increased 10% to $151 million from $136 million.

Average revenue per user rose 7% to $253 from $237. GoDaddy also highlighted retention among customers using multiple products: consolidated customer retention exceeded 85%, while retention among customers with three or more attached products was above 95%. More than half of its customer base uses at least two products, according to the presentation.

Airo bookings run rate surpasses $100 million

Airo, GoDaddy’s AI-powered platform for small businesses, exceeded a $100 million annualized bookings run rate in the third quarter, more than double its level in the second quarter. The company has made Airo its flagship website-building product, replacing Websites + Marketing, and has positioned it as the default option within the domains purchase path.

Management said Airo is priced to encourage broad adoption and is producing encouraging conversion and product-attachment rates. GoDaddy is also expanding its pricing and bundling options, launching agent-friendly application programming interfaces and working to improve its visibility in AI-based customer channels.

The company’s longer-term strategy is to become an “agentic operating system” for micro and small businesses. Its related infrastructure initiatives include Agent Name Service, or ANS, which is intended to support verified identities and open standards for interactions involving AI agents.

Share count falls as buybacks continue

GoDaddy ended the quarter with 123 million fully diluted shares outstanding, down 11% from 137 million a year earlier and 12% since the start of 2026. The company said it had deployed more than 95% of free cash flow to share repurchases over the past four years and had reduced its fully diluted share count by 39% since 2022.

At September 30, GoDaddy held $1.1 billion in cash and had $2.3 billion of total liquidity. Net debt was $2.7 billion, and its leverage ratio stood at 1.4 times, compared with 1.6 times at the end of 2025. Fixed-rate borrowings represented 85% of its debt.

For 2026, GoDaddy’s modeling assumptions include approximately $30 million of capital expenditures, $150 million of cash interest on debt and $30 million of cash income taxes.

The outlook remains subject to risks including customer adoption and monetization of Airo, the migration from legacy products, changes in product mix and pricing, and the company’s ability to develop and scale ANS and related infrastructure. GoDaddy also identified competition, cybersecurity threats, service disruptions, changing customer-acquisition channels, regulatory developments and macroeconomic conditions as factors that could cause results to differ from its expectations.