Endurance continues to roll up, purchases BuyDomains
NameMedia sells off domain name portfolio.
Publicly traded Endurance International Group continued its roll up of the webhosting and domain name business last quarter with the buyout of BuyDomains, the firm disclosed today.
In his prepared statements for its quarterly earnings call, Endurance CEO Hari Ravichandran stated:
Second, we closed the buyout of BuyDomains, a Waltham, MA based provider of premium domain products and services, in the second half of September. BuyDomains allows us to address our subscribers’ needs for premium domains. BuyDomains also provides us with certain rights to valuable intellectual property. We feel this buyout rounds out our domain product offering, but does not change our go to market approach of leading with a web presence bundle.
Along with two unrelated recent acquisitions, Endurance paid a total of $77 million. [Update: Endurance paid $44.9 million.]
With the sale of the BuyDomains assets, NameMedia has essentially sold off its operating businesses and created an exit for its investors.
NameMedia sold its Afternic business to GoDaddy in September 2013. That left it with its million domain portfolio as well as the BuyDomains site, a popular domain name destination for modest and medium businesses.
NameMedia was originally created with the purchase of Mike Mann’s BuyDomains (RareNames) for $72.5 million plus stock. The firm filed to go public in 2008, but later withdrew its plans.
