GoDaddy's second quarter did the work a steady, mature platform is supposed to do. Total revenue rose 6.6% year-over-year to nearly $1.30 billion. Operating income expanded almost 29% as depreciation on legacy intangibles rolled off the income statement. That operating leverage story sits at the center of the quarter, not the headline revenue number, and it explains why a relatively modest top-line beat produced a much larger earnings beat. The mix between the two reporting segments matters because it shows where the leverage is coming from. Applications and Commerce, the higher-margin software bundle that includes the Airo AI-native site builder, grew 11.0% in the period. The legacy Core Platform segment grew at a 3.9% pace. Investors looking for a software-style growth curve have a real signal in that gap, even if the consolidated top line still looks more like a steady compounder than an aggressive grower.
The customer economics underneath those segment prints quietly improved. Average revenue per user climbed roughly 9% to $250. A year ago the figure stood at $230, so the bundling strategy is lifting the value of each subscriber rather than simply adding more of them. Total customers ticked up to 20.46 million, compared with 20.42 million at year-end. Domains under management crossed nearly 82 million. Those customer metrics are an important reminder that the original domain registrar engine keeps growing even as the company pushes aggressively into commerce and AI features. Stock-based compensation expense came in near $70 million for the quarter, modestly below the prior year. Restructuring was a rounding error at $6.9 million in the NEBITDA reconciliation. The efficiency story is being delivered through the mix shift toward higher-margin software rather than through any dramatic cost-cut program.
Capital returns are doing the heavy lifting on the equity story. The company repurchased roughly 9.6 million shares for $833.6 million in the first half alone, executing against a multi-year authorization. Buyback intensity is large enough to materially compress the share count each year. The second-quarter disclosure included a new amendment to the company's credit facility, evidence that management continues to lean on debt and operating cash to fund the program. Shares closed near $82.74 on the day the quarterly disclosure was filed, marking a sharp reversal from above $99 the prior session. They have since recovered into the low $100s around $101.51. The market cap stands near $12.9 billion. Trailing EBITDA is roughly $1.4 billion, which puts the forward multiple under 10. That valuation profile suggests the market is treating GoDaddy as a low-growth, high-cash-return equity rather than an AI-software story, even as the operating segment is shifting toward software. The argument worth weighing is whether the AI-native commerce layer can do for Applications and Commerce revenue what bundling did for ARPU, because that is the variable that decides whether the forward multiple re-rates higher.