$60M Line of Credit — Oversee.net Grabs
Domain name firm gets line of credit for acquisitions and working capital.
Oversee.net, parent firm of domain name parking firm DomainSponsor, has arranged a $60M line of credit. The revolving line of credit will was arranged by Banc of America Securities LLC. Bank of America, N.A. will serve as administrative agent. A syndicate of lenders and financial institutions is participating in the facility with Bank of America, counting Comerica Bank, California Bank and Trust and Silicon Valley Bank.
Lawrence Ng, CEO of Oversee.net, states the line of credit will give the firm the flexibility to pursue its agressive growth plans.
Over the past year Oversee.net has gone on a massive domain buyout spree. The firm now owns over 500,000 domains, making it one of the biggest domain name portfolio owners. DomainSponsor right now monetizes over 2.5M domain names. By monetizing these domains Oversee.net has unique insight into the value of the domains, which gives it a competitive advantage.
This line of credit puts more money into the market chasing domain name portfolio acquisitions. Firms such as iREIT, Demand Media, and Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) have over $100M in capitalization for domain purchases, although much of this has by now been invested over the past couple years. Each of these firms is pursuing slightly different strategies. Demand Media purchased registrars eNom and Bulk Register and is focusing on user-generated content for its domains. Marchex has a sizable portfolio of domains, many of them zip code domains, and uses its own advertising network to monetize them. iREIT has focused on sizable portfolio acquisitions and content development monetized by Google Adsense.
