Faith in the future

Financial report 2018

A good year

2018 was a good year for DNS Belgium. In 2018 there were slightly fewer registrations of new domain names than we had estimated. On the other hand, the number of renewals exceeded our estimates, which means our revenues were still in line with expectations.

Our costs are predictable. This means that, as in previous years, we had them well under control in 2018 and they were completely in line with what we had budgeted. Good income and controlled costs ensured that we generated a nice profit. The fact that we are doing this year after year results in a nice growth of our cash flow. This makes DNS Belgium a financially very healthy organisation.

Apart from the financial aspects, we remember a number of good operational achievements in 2018, of which we are rightly proud. 

Sustainability

  • Our ambitious climate programme, our zero carbon footprint efforts and the efforts to reduce and compensate our CO2emissions - including historic emissions - were rewarded by VOKA. In 2018, DNS Belgium was nominated as climate ambassador for Flemish Brabant
  • In 2018, we renewed our website. It is now completely AnySurfer-compliant. It means our website is also accessible to poor-sighted, (colour) blind, elderly people and disabled or impaired people. 

Security

  • From 1 December 2018, in collaboration with the FPS Economy, we are able to take fraudulent websites offline within 24 hours without having to go through a lengthy procedure. Together we ensure that consumers can trust .be websites 100 percent.
  • Because DNS Belgium values privacy, we are of course GDPR-compliant. As administrator of .be, .vlaanderen and .brussels domain names, this means that since 2018 we show even fewer personal data when you look up who is behind a certain domain name. 

Health and safety at work

  • The mental and physical health of our employees is important to us. That's why in 2018 we organised a fit@work programme with voluntary fitness measurements for our people. Programme participants were given a fitbit watch and access to a platform to set their own goals and track their results. Participants receive regular challenges of the fit@work-coach within DNS Belgium.
  • With a view to the continuous coaching of our employees, we launched a number of new procedures. This coaching replaces conventional evaluations and comprises a personal – and completely voluntary – training plan and budget. 

Customer trust and cyber security

  • Since 2010 - then as a pioneer inour sector - we take our responsibility to screen and ‘cancel’ our registrations on a daily basis when the registration information is not reliable enough.  
  • Since 2013, building customer trust has been high on DNS Belgium's agenda. Despite our already considerable attention for security, DNS Belgium will focus even more on cybersecurity in 2019.
  • In addition, as an organisation we will of course continue to aim for operational excellence and invest in our ongoing search for greater efficiency. 
  • Sustainability in the broad sense of the word remains an important objective in 2019 of course. Our greatest focus lies on supporting and stimulating digital society and in particular youngsters, among others, via CoderDojo, Child Focus, Ava & Trix, etc. 

Staff

At the end of 2018, DNS Belgium employed 32 workers. At the beginning of 2018, we offered a permanent contract to a temporary employee in the customer support department and in the course of 2018, we also hired an additional worker for external relations. The population within the other departments remained stable, although we realised that an expansion of the engineering team is necessary for 2019 in the context of R&D.

Annual accounts

Profit-and-loss account in euro

  2018 2017 2016 2015
Income 
Income from registration fees 6.952.837 6.864.036 6.013.185 5.081.771
New names 970.672 1.031.574 933.612 1.001.285
Renewals 5.531.609 5.383.036 4.692.950 3.721.457
Transfers 301.422 316.341 268.670 220.396
Reactivations 114.672 99.182 94.247 93.908
Services 17.122 17.366 6.160 6.055
Transfers uit quarantine 17.340 16.537 17.546 17.077
Application validation/Auction (new gTLDs) - - - 21.593
Financial income 7.972 8.358 6.400 7.805
Produced fixed assets - 541.224 750.144 316.058
Exceptional income - 2.913 124 22.731
Total income 6.960.809 7.416.531 6.769.853 5.428.365
 
Expenditure 
Personnel costs 3.641.717 3.317.571 2.806.533 2.908.851
External consultancy 235.113 590.433 844.642 300.752
Costs of technical operations 679.902 1.018.043 1.060.552 879.879
General overheads 1.054.616 1.207.431 1.008.128 789.771
Depreciation 778.139 522.075 402.581 391.561
Financial costs 19.939 15.372 21.559 20.540
Total expenditure 6.409.426 6.670.925 6.143.995 5.291.354
 
RESULT 551.383 745.606 625.858 137.011

Balance

Assets

2018 2017 2016 2015
Fixed assets
Restructuring charges 15.717 30.910 46.102 70.307
Intangible, tangible and financial assets 2.221.192 2.882.806 2.783.924 2.030.998
Current assets
Receivables due within one year - Trade debtors 867.836 833.895 968.044 876.448
Receivables due within one year  - Other amounts receivable 20.405 21.642 48.938 7.450
Cash at bank and in hand 5.069.236 3.674.035 2.801.407 1.937.645
Deferred charges and accrued income 179.382 225.574 260.427 276.742
Total assets 8.373.768 7.668.862 6.908.842 5.199.590

 

Liabilities

2018 2017 2016 2015
Capital and reserves
Surplus carried forward 1.539.535 793.930 168.072 31.061
Result financial year 551.383 745.606 625.858 137.011
Liabilities
Suppliers 874.805 751.117 954.101 630.924
Taxes, remuneration and social security costs 814.250 805.581 599.469 664.355
Advance payment registrars 1.367.225 1.371.357 1.405.649 1.370.827
Accrued charges and deferred income 3.226.570 3.201.271 3.155.693 2.365.412
Total liabilities  8.373.768 7.668.862 6.908.842 5.199.590