Marchex releases more details regarding Archeo spinoff

SEC filing details plans for spin-off of domain business.

Later this year, Marchex hopes to spin off its pay-per-click and domain name business into a fresh publicly traded business called Archeo. It will trade on the NASDAQ under the ticker ACHX.

It released more information regarding Archeo in a June 7 SEC filing.

On the domain name side of the business, Archeo will work to sell domains from its portfolio of 200,000+ domains, “opportunistically” acquire fresh domains, and selectively develop sites.

This model is similar to a number of sizable domain name portfolio holders.

The firm will launch a domain marketplace. At first it will focus on selling Archeo’s domain names, with a focus on what it considers to be its premium domains. Over time it may include domains owned by third parties.

Of the domains Archeo owns, more than 75,000 are U.S. zip code sites in .com and .net. The firm owns lots of geo targeted sites.

For now, two of the firm’s executives are also Marchex executives Russell Horowitz (CEO of Marchex) and Rod Diefendorf (COO of Marchex).

The firm also hire Michelle Miller at the beginning of this year (she was contracting for the firm last year). Miller worked with Mike Mann to help build BuyDomains into a giant domain portfolio firm that was sold to NameMedia.

The SEC filing also includes this chart, showing domain sales averages noted by Sedo compared to Archeo’s own results.

The firm has started to release quarterly domain sales information, which ought to add much more color to these averages.