Plans to spin off domains division Archeo — Marchex shelves

Archeo will remain a division of Marchex instead of becoming its own publicly traded firm.

Marchex has canceled its plan to spin off its domain name business into a separate public firm, at least for now.

The firm disclosed plans last November to spin off its domain business into a fresh firm called Archeo. Marchex had long neglected its portfolio of over 200,000 domain names, and making it part of a separate firm would allow it to better monetize the asset.

Since then, the group sold some of its pay-per-click assets, which ultimately made the business too modest (at this time) to justify the costs of being a public firm.

It also seems that Marchex was going to miss the cashflow that the domain business throws off. The firm also disclosed that it is going to use a portion of Archeo’s cashflow to fund an ongoing quarterly dividend.

Despite canceling the plans, Archeo will operate as a separate division of Marchex.

Firm officials told Reglike that it is not changing its business model from what its plans were for the public firm. In other words: Archeo will still sell its domains, buy fresh ones, and look for partnerships to develop its best domains.