According to a Securities & Exchange Commission quarterly report filing (10-Q), the ETF.com domain name and website were sold earlier this year for $12.6 million. The deal was originally announced in a press release in March, although the price was not revealed until this recent filing. As you probably know, ETF is an acronym for “exchange traded fund,” and ETF.com has been an active website.
The buyer of the domain name and website is Bats Global Markets, a publicly traded company. According to the about us page on ETF.com, Bats Global Markets is “a leading global operator of exchanges and services for financial markets and the world’s No. 1 market for ETF trading.”
Here’s what the SEC filing had to say about the ETF.com domain name and website:
“On April 1, 2016, the Company completed the acquisition of ETF.com for $12.6 million in cash. ETF.com is a provider of exchange traded fund (ETF) data, news and analysis, with approximately $3.0 million in annual revenue for 2015. The purchase price was allocated to goodwill ($8.5 million), intangible assets ($3.5 million) and working capital ($0.6 million) and is recorded in the U.S. Equities segment.”
Obviously, the acquisition was not purely a domain name purchase. However, I think it is pretty clear that a significant part of the acquisition cost was due to the high value ETF.com domain name.
They could have “bought” a possible .ETF extension for that money plus app. 30 other nTLD’s.
Yet they went with the .com. Great deal!
I wonder exactly how they were making $3m annual last year.
“Ever considered adding a like tab ? I would have used it on “John” comment