Reglikedomain industry desk

Shareholders approve KeyDrive buyout; deal to close tomorrow

Long-awaited merger will be completed tomorrow.

Domain name firm CentralNic (AIM:CNIC) held a shareholder meeting this morning at which shareholders approved the firm’s buyout of KeyDrive S.A. With the shareholder approval, the firm will complete its buyout of Keydrive tomorrow morning.

The cash-and-equity deal will give CentralNic a much bigger position in the domain registration business counting the Key-Systems platform and retail registrar Moniker. CentralNic by now owns retail domain name registrars Instra and Internet.bs.

KeyDrive grossed $58.26 million in the 2017 fiscal year. CentralNic’s top line was £24.3m in 2017 (regarding $32M USD at today’s exchange rate).

CentralNic has been growing largely by buyout in recent years. At the general meeting, shareholders rejected a measure to streamline future acquisitions by giving CentralNic advanced permission to issue shares to non-shareholders without having to gain the specific agreement of existing shareholders.

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