Ten days ago, GoDaddy announced it will be acquiring Uniregistry. The deal terms and value were not announced by either company, and I do not anticipate the exact details of the sale will be shared by GoDaddy, Uniregistry, or Uniregistry Founder Frank Schilling. It does appear that we now have a price range for the deal based on GoDaddy’s 2019 Annual Report.
Here’s an excerpt from the report that references the acquisitions GoDaddy recently made:
“Subsequent Events
In February 2020, we entered into agreements for two acquisitions with an aggregate purchase price of approximately $196.9 million, of which $149.1 million has been paid in cash. The remaining $47.8 million will be paid upon receipt of certain regulatory approvals and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions as well as upon the expiration of the contractual holdback period.”
I reached out to a representative from GoDaddy to ask if this figure includes the company’s recent acquisition of Over, a social content startup. This acquisition was reported by TechCrunch in late January and the Annual Report referred to two acquisitions from February. I was told that this figure includes the acquisition of Over, so the Uniregistry deal was for the $196.9 amount minus whatever Over cost to acquire.
Even though we do not know know the exact amount of the Uniregistry sale, I would imagine GoDaddy got a very good price and Frank Schilling landed on a very nice deal as well. There aren’t many people who can say they built a company and sold it for nine figures, and it sure does seem like that happened with Frank.
If I see any more information that brings additional clarity to the deal, I will share it.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/godaddy-acquires-uniregistrys-registrar-marketplace–portfolio-301003011.html
“..The Uniregistry domain registry is not part of the transaction.”
He gets to keep this. Look forward to how that plays out.
If the Uniregistry deal was for $196M – Over deal, I would say Godaddy was the winner in that sale if they got everything except the GTLD”s, and Brandsight also, looks like maybe around $3XX per name range.
I think that Frank sold too low, $200-300 million too low. But I’m assuming circumstances forced his hand unfortunately.
I suspect the Over acquisition was substantial. They talked about it a bit in the earnings call. I would guess it was 30-50% of the total. Slightly larger employee count than Uni.
Think a lot of people are way overestimating portfolio values. The earning on the portfolio hadn’t gone up in 15 years and Ultsearch’s old portfolio got sold for $35million when resold.
Suspect maybe $60 million on the portfolio, total numbers are obviously coming in way lower than people thought. It is becoming clear that Yun Ye had the best exit. The time to sell an entire portfolio was 2004-2007 when parking was hot and revenues were growing fast.