[Chapter-delegates] What's going on? As presented, the sale of PIR should be rejected by the Board

[Richard Hill]

Regarding the money coming from PIR, it looks to me, from ISOC's financial statements, that ISOC needs at least 30 million/year from ".org".

To generate that revenue flow from a very low risk investment such as long-term US Treasury bonds would require getting 1.5 billion from the sale of PIR (the current rate for such bonds is about 2%).

As I had estimated in a separate e-mail posted to the Internet policy list, the value of the revenue stream from ".org" can be estimate at anywhere between 200 million and 2 billion.

Of course one can envisage investments that have higher yields that US Treasury Bonds.

However, all things considered, it appears to me that anything less than 1 billion for PIR would not necessarily be a good deal for ISOC, in terms of ensuring adequate annual funding.

Best,
Richard

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chapter-delegates [mailto:chapter-delegates-
> bounces at elists.isoc.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Sullivan via Chapter-
> delegates
> Sent: Saturday, November 16, 2019 03:50
> To: chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
> Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] What's going on? As presented, the
> sale of PIR should be rejected by the Board
> 
> On Thu, Nov 14, 2019 at 04:21:24AM +0000, Caleb Olumuyiwa Ogundele
> wrote:
> 
> > The implication might see to the increase in the purchase price of
> dot ORG
> > domains.
> 
> You might have seen that anyway, because ISOC historically (and still!
> this deal hasn't closed, remember!) has relied upon the money coming
> from PIR to support ISOC's activities.  The thing that actually
> constrains wholesale prices in .org is its market, not ICANN and not
> PIR's status as a non-profit.  And note what both PIR has said about
> the topic: "Our goal has always been to make .ORG accessible and
> reasonably priced – and that will continue under our new ownership."
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> A
> 
> --
> Andrew Sullivan
> President & CEO, Internet Society
> sullivan at isoc.org
> +1 416 731 1261
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